JOSIPN  MCDONOUGH 

RARE  BOOKS 

^  ALBANY  -  NY.) 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR, 


AND 


CONCERNING  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  JUSTICE  BETWEEN 
THE  LABORERS  AND  THE  CAPITALISTS.  T 


NEW  YORK: 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY, 

549  AND  551  BROADWAY. 

1876. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1876, 
By  D.  A  PPLETON  &  CO., 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


i  tf  4 


INTRODUCTORY. 


Nothing  ambitious  lias  been  attempted  in  this 
little  book.  The  writer  has  not  undertaken  to 
construct  a  social  theory,  nor  to  solve  the  grave 
problems  which  are  involved  in  the  relations  ex¬ 
isting  between  labor  and  capital,  by  any  copy¬ 
righted  or  patented  formula  whatsoever.  He  has 
simply  tried  to  investigate — for  his  own  satisfac¬ 
tion  in  the  first  instance — the  conditions  under 
which  the  work  of  the  world  is  done,  and  to  do  so 
with  impartiality  of  feeling,-  as  between  the  classes 
that  contribute  to  it ;  to  ascertain  how  far  such 
conditions  are  conventional  or  arbitrary  and  how 
far  they  are  naturally  fixed ;  to  discover,  conse¬ 
quently,  what  readjustments  appear  practicable, 
and  to  learn,  at  the  same  time,  what  principles  of 
justice  are  underlying  the  whole  matter.  He  has 
aimed  at  nothing  more,  in  a  word,  than  to  find 
the  direction  in  which  one  may  hopefully  look 
for  some  more  harmonious  and  more  satisfac¬ 
tory  conjunction  of  capital  with  labor  than  pre¬ 
vails  in  our  present  social  state,  by  finding  in  what 
direction  the  rules  of  ethics  and  the  laws  of  politi- 


4 


INTRODUCTORY. 


cal  economy  tend  together.  That  there  must  be 
such  a  coincidence  between  what  is  just  and  what 
is  practicable  —  between  material  conditions  and 
moral  principles,  in  the  evolution  of  society — he 
is  persuaded  firmly.  If  he  has  gained  even  a  dim 
discernment  of  it,  he  has  done  all  that  he  expected 
to  do.  Time  alone  can  bring  about  the  full  dis¬ 
covery. 

In  submitting  the  meagre  results  of  an  earnest 
study  of  the  subject,  he  has  endeavored  to  present 
them  as  briefly  and  compactly  as  possible,  only 
hoping  to  suggest  to  some  other  minds  a  mode  of 
thought  wdiich  they  may  be  willing  to  pursue. 
He  has  also  endeavored  to  present  the  argument 
of  his  view  with  fairness,  and  has  adopted  for  that 
purpose — though  with  imperfect  skill — the  con¬ 
versational  form,  in  which  both  modifying  and 
opposing  considerations  can  be  brought  into  a  dis¬ 
cussion  most  easily.  This  method  of  treating  the 
subject  has  sometimes  induced — in  the  opening 
chapters  especially — an  extremeness  of  statement 
on  one  side,  which  the  counter-statement  is  trusted 
to  correct.  Taken  alone,  there  are  some  state¬ 
ments  of  that  kind,  perhaps,  wdiich  the  writer 
would  not  wish  to  have  accepted  as  sound  teach¬ 
ing.  If  his  view  of  the  subject  is  considered  at 
all,  he  would  ask  to  have  it  considered  as  a  w  hole. 

J.  K  L. 


Buffalo,  May,  1876. 


CONTENTS. 


FIRST  EVENING. 


ABOUT  THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL. 


PAGE 

A  Vision  of  Judgment. — The  Evolution  of  Justice  in  Human 
History. — The  Nature  and  Functions  of  Capital. — Its  In¬ 
herently  Oppressive  Powers. — The  Theoretic  Situation  of 
Hired  Labor. —  Human  Necessities  against  Human  De¬ 
sires. — The  Relations  of  Political  Economy  to  the  Social 
Problem  .........  7 


SECOND  EVENING. 

ABOUT  THE  RIGHTS  OF  CAPITAL. 

Might  and  Right  in  Society. — What  morally  belongs  to  Supe¬ 
rior  Endowments  and  Advantages. — The  Point  of  Social 
Equilibrium. — Some  Study  of  the  Modes  in  which  Wealth 
is  acquired. —  The  Judge’s  Doctrine  of  Morals  and  his 
Doctrine  of  Justice . 34 


6 


CONTENTS. 


THIRD  EVENING. 

ABOUT  TDE  COMPETITION  OF  FACULTIES  AMONG  MEN. 

PAGB 

The  Comparative  Quality  of  “  Business  ”  Faculties  and  the 
Excessive  Premium  put  upon  them. — The  Judge’s  Co¬ 
operative  Theory. — Trades-Unions  and  Labor-Strikes. — 

The  Preaching  and  Teaching  that  need  to  go  together  .  69 


FOURTn  EVENING. 

ABOUT  THE  JUST  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR. 

The  Increase  of  Production  within  a  Century  past.  —  The 
Judge’s  Estimates. — Machine  Labor  and  its  Results. — 

The  Working-man’s  Measure  of  Gain. — Wasteful  Con¬ 
sumption. — What  it  is  and  what  Kind  of  Waste  can  be 
socially  restrained.  —  The  Sources  of  Increase  to  the 
Capital  Fund  and  of  Increased  Dividends  to  Labor  .  98 


FIFTH  EVENING. 

ABOUT  TIIE  WAYS  AND  MEANS  OF  JUSTICE. 

The  “  Wages-Fund”  and  the  Wages  System. — The  Common 
“Compensation  Fund”  which  may  be  substituted  in 
Political  Economy.  —  Effects  of  Partnership  between  A 
Labor  and  Capital. — Its  Practical  Beginnings  and  its 
Ultimate  Consequences. — Loanable  Capital  and  Public 
Debts. — The  Judge’s  New  Party. — Malthus  and  the  Far 
Future . 181 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOE. 


FIEST  EVENING. 

ABOUT  THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL. 

A  Vision  of  Judgment. — The  Evolution  of  Justice  in  Human  His¬ 
tory. — Nature  and  Functions  of  Capital.  —  Its  Inherently 
Oppressive  Powers. — The  Theoretic  Situation  of  Hired  La¬ 
bor. — Human  Necessities  against  Human  Desires. — The  Re¬ 
lations  of  Political  Economy  to  the  Social  Problem. 

The  judge  (who  is  not  a  judge,  by  the  way,  but 
only  called  so  in  familiar  speech  by  some  of  us  who 
should  like  to  see  him  on  the  bench)  had  lately 
become  my  neighbor,  living  a  few  doors  distant 
on  the  same  street.  I  knew  that  his  home  was 
desolate  and  had  lost  its  charm  for  him,  because 
the  shadow  of  death  which  is  darker  than  any 
other  had  fallen  on  it  not  many  months  before. 
So  I  proposed  to  him  that  he  should  drop  in  upon 
me,  for  an  evening  smoke  and  an  hour  or  two  of 
quiet  talk,  just  as  frequently  as  he  might  afford, 
without  keeping  any  account  between  us  of  visits 
given  or  returned.  He  accepted  the  invitation 


8 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR . 


frankly,  and  came  often  during  the  winter  to  my 
little  study — as  we  style,  with  some  complacency, 
the  modest  chamber  of  our  cottage  in  which  I 
smoke  and  read  during  idle  hours  at  home. 

It  happened  rather  fortunately,  I  think,  that 
on  the  night  when  the  judge  came  first  I  sat 
with  a  newspaper  in  my  hand,  and  had  been  read¬ 
ing  in  it  the  account  of  a  certain  wide-spread 
“  strike”  among  the  workmen  of  some  important 
trade  in  the  Eastern  States.  This  led  us  into  talk 
upon  a  subject  which  I  found  had  interested  him 
much,  and  on  which  he  had  been  pondering,  in 
his  characteristic  way,  with  searching  earnest¬ 
ness. 

I  had  wheeled  an  easy-cliair  for  him  to  the 
front  of  the  fire,  which  burned  cheerfully  in  the 
grate  ;  we  had  settled  ourselves  comfortably,  with 
full  pipes,  and  surrounded  ourselves  satisfactorily 
with  that  atmosphere  of  fragrant  smoke  in  which 
ideas  float  more  lightly  than  they  do  in  common 
air.  My  wife,  who  likes  the  pleasant  little  room, 
for  all  its  smokiness — and  none  the  less,  perhaps, 
because  of  that — sat  opposite,  half  busy  with  some 
bit  of  foolish  sewing,  as  women  like  to  be  in  their 
leisure  times,  while  my  elder  daughter  Kate,  in 
the  sitting-room  just  beyond,  was  entertaining  a 
young  gentleman  named  John,  whose  frequent 
visits,  I  began  to  see,  had  an  object  in  them  which 
I  could  not  altogether  disapprove. 


FIRST  EVENING. 


9 


We  had  skirmished  for  a  while  in  the  region 
of  small-talk,  as  people  do  until  they  have  uncov¬ 
ered,  on  one  side  or  the  other,  some  ground  on 
which  they  may  engage  in  rational  conversation, 
and  at  last,  in  a  casual  way,  I  made  allusion  to  the 
matter  of  which  I  had  been  reading,  and  remarked 
that,  even  in  this  country  of  fewer  hands  than 
acres,  the  labor  question,  as  it  is  called,  or  the 
question  between  capital  and  labor,  is  becoming  a 
very  serious  one. 

“  I  think,”  replied  the  judge,  “  that  it  has  be¬ 
come  already  the  question  above  all  other  ques¬ 
tions  in  social  importance,  and  that  we  have  not 
another  problem  in  the  world  to-day  that  is  press¬ 
ing  upon  us  so  sternly  for  an  equitable  solution 
as  that  one  which  is  involved  in  the  perpetual 
contention  between  capitalists  and  laborers.” 

I  was  surprised  at  the  emphasis  and  earnest¬ 
ness  with  which  he  spoke  on  the  subject,  and, 
while  I  admitted  the  importance  of  this  labor 
question,  I  doubted  whether  it  could  be  held  to 
take  rank  above  all  other  questions,  when  we  con¬ 
sider  the  many  issues  that  remain  in  controversy 
among  men,  affecting  their  social  state,  both  in 
morals  and  in  government. 

“  Why,”  said  he,  u  this  labor  question  of  to¬ 
day  succeeds  the  slavery  question  of  yesterday, 
inevitably,  by  the  nature  of  things.  Having  de¬ 
termined  that  one  man  may  not  own  the  labor  of 


10 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


another  man,  how  can  we  help  going  on  to  inquire 
about  and  ascertain  the  just  terms  on  which  the 
labor  of  one  may  be  used  by  another  ?  It  is 
plainly,  to  my  mind,  the  sequent  step — the  next 
proceeding  in  the  inquisition  of  human  rights, 
which  we  are  forced  to  enter  upon,  whether  will¬ 
ingly  or  not.  Our  civilization,  as  we  call  it,  is, 
more  than  anything  else,  an  evolution  of  the  sen¬ 
timent  of  justice  among  men,  and  almost  every 
other  fruit  of  civilization,  in  its  moral  aspect,  is 
incident  to  that  or  developed  out  of  it.  This  re¬ 
sults  so  from  the  kneading  and  moulding  of  men 
into  organic  social  masses — a  process  which  tends 
steadily  to  press  out  the  savage  egotism  or  selfism 
which  saturates  the  isolated  human  being.  Now, 
that  sentiment  of  justice,  or  sensibility  to  injus¬ 
tice,  in  society,  which  has  only  to-day  gathered 
enlightenment  enough  to  abhor  a  legal  system 
of  servitude  which  it  tolerated  yesterday,  cannot 
have  reached  yet  the  end  of  its  education  in  that 
direction,  but  rather  the  beginning  of  new  teach¬ 
ings  that  are  larger  and  more  exact.  Just  as  surely 
as  it  has  recognized  the  hideous  oppression  of  law  ’ 
which  made  one  man  the  master  by  ownership  of 
another,  just  so  surely  it  is  going  to  take  cogni¬ 
zance  now  of  the  oppression  of  those  circumstances 
in  the  social  state  which  give  to  one  an  overmas¬ 
tering  power  over  his  fellow. 

“  This  movement  of  education  among  men  to 


FIRST  EVENING. 


11 


a  truer  apprehension  of  justice  and  right,  in  place 
of  conventional  notions  which  confuse  the  moral 
sense,  is  not  an  eccentric  one ;  it  follows  logical 
paths  to  its  several  ends,  and  can  he  traced  like 
the  construction  of  so  many  syllogisms  in  human 
history.  In  fact,  the  slow  judicial  action  of  society, 
sifting  out  rights  from  wrongs  by  clumsy  methods 
and  tardy  forms  of  procedure,  and  so  establishing 
equity  between  its  members,  is  almost  all  there  is 
of  history  that  is  worth  a  serious  studying.  My 
reading  of  the  chronicles  of  our  race  is  very  much 
to  me  as  though  I  stood  upon  the  threshold  and 
looked  into  some  great  judgment-hall,  wherein 
the  painful  formulation  of  an  unwritten  common 
law  of  justice  between  man  and  man  has  been  go¬ 
ing  on,  since  human  history  began,  in  passionate 
litigation,  in  tedious  argument,  in  hesitating  but 
irrevocable  decisions.  This  solemn  court  of  high 
chancery  sits  always  ;  knows  no  •  adjournment ; 
never  suspends  nor  dismisses  a  cause.  Its  judges 
and  jury  we  cannot  see,  for  they  are  of  that 
ghostly  and  changeful  substance  which  has  its 
palpable  but  unseen  forms,  and  which  we  call 
4  public  opinion.’  But  the  suitors,  the  clients,  the 
witnesses,  the  advocates,  the  attorneys,  the  bailiffs 
— they  throng  the  court.  Whole  nations  fill  its 
wide  galleries  and  its  far-stretching  corridors  and 
aisles,  waiting  for  the  verdicts  which  come  so 
slowly  in.  It  is  a  merciless  and  an  awful  court ; 


12 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR . 


its  justice  long  delayed  and  very  stern.  Death 
and  terror  are  its  frequent  ministers  ;  many  times 
its  instruments  have  been  pestilence  and  famine 
and  war,  insurrection,  revolution  and  massacre, 
the  dungeon,  the  scaffold  and  the  stake.  It  has 
issued  its  writs  in  blood,  and  executed  them  with 
fire  and  sword.  It  wears  out  the  lives  of  its  lit¬ 
igants  with  the  weariness  of  its  forms  and  the 
heartlessness  of  its  procedure.  Generations  die, 
and  son  succeeds  to  son  in  the  inheritance  of  every 
wrong  that  is  pleaded  at  its  bar.  But  the  verdict 
of  justice  issues  always  at  last ;  indisputably  jus¬ 
tice;  inexorably  the  final  and  the  absolute  adju¬ 
dication  of  right.  At  long  intervals,  of  many 
centuries  sometimes,  there  is  a  pause  and  a  stir  in 
the  august  chamber,  and  the  voices  of  the  criers 
proclaim  an  old  cause  ended,  the  trial  of  a  new 
cause  begun ;  the  old  cause  settled  forever  and 
ever,  and  sent  out  of  court  with  the  seal  of  an 
everlasting  judgment  set  upon  it;  the  new  cause 
summoned  to  a  hearing  that  will  not  rest  until 
the  same  irrevocable  seal  has  been  stamped  upon 
the  decision  of  it.  So,  in  times  past,  we  have 
heard  the  suit  of  the  people  against  the  king,  the 
suit  of  the  commons  against  the  lords,  the  suit  of 
conscience  against  the  Church,  cried  into  court 
and  cried  out  of  court ;  and  so,  too,  of  late,  not 
least  though  last,  we  have  heard  the  procla¬ 
mation  of  justice  declared  in  the  long,  long 


FIRST  EVENING. 


13 


suit  of  the  slave  and  the  serf  against  their  mas¬ 
ters. 

“  Is" ow,  I  tell  you,  when  the  slave  went  out  of 
court,  a  triumphant  suitor,  the  laborer  for  hire 
came  in  and  took  his  place ;  for  when  the  great 
chancery  court  of  civilization  pronounced  against 
the  possession  by  one  man  of  the  labor  of  another 
through  mastery,  or  force,  or  operation  of  law,  it 
bound  itself  to  go  further  in  the  matter  and  to  in¬ 
vestigate  the  equity  of  the  terms  under  which  one 
man,  in  any  other  way,  may  possess  the  fruits  of 
another’s  labor ;  the  equity,  that  is,  of  the  division 
to  be  made  between  him  who  toils  and  him  who 
possesses  the  tools  and  the  materials  with  which 
and  on  which  that  toil  is  expended.  The  trial  of 
this  question  is  on.  Its  hearing  has  begun.  It 
cannot  be  arrested  by  any  injunction,  nor  by  any 
change  of  venue,  nor  by  any  stopping  of  the  ears 
nor  shutting  of  the  eyes.  It  will  go  on,  and  on, 
to  the  end,  whether  that  be  this  century  or  the 
next  one.” 

The  judge  is  ordinarily  a  quiet  man  in  his 
talk.  I  never  had  heard  him  speak  in  so  fervid  a 
temper  and  so  oratorical  a  style  before.  I  could 
see  that  his  feelings  had  been  deeply  wrought  upon 
by  the  subject,  and  I  became  curious  to  know  what 
view  of  it  had  produced  this  effect  on  so  dispas¬ 
sionate  a  mind. 

My  wife  had  dropped  her  sewing  in  her  lap, 


14 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


and  her  face  wore  something  of  a  startled  look. 
“  You  have  frightened  me,  almost,”  said  she, 
“ with  your  vision  of  judgment;  I  never  thought 
of  history  in  that  way  before.  There  is  an  awful 
solemnity  in  the  idea,  and  it  does  not  seem  to  he 
a  fanciful  one  at  all,  hut  so  real  that  I  can  almost 
feel  myself  in  the  very  presence  of  the  inexorable 
court.” 

“  I  have  the  same  impression,”  was  my  re¬ 
mark,  “  and  the  picture  which  the  judge  has  drawn 
is,  without  any  doubt,  as  true  as  it  is  striking.  But 
I  do  not  exactly  see  that  the  suit  of  the  laborer 
for  a  just  partition  of  the  products  of  labor  is  so 
immediately  sequent  to  that  of  the  slave  for  his 
freedom.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  two  questions 
involved  are  so  different,  both  in  origin  and  in 
principle,  tlrat  the  solution  of  one  does  not  open 
the  way  very  much  to  a  solution  of  the  other. 
The  institution  of  slavery  is  a  purely  arbitrary  one, 
existing  by  virtue,  only,  of  a  determination  on  the 
part  of  one  body  of  men  to  oppress  another  body 
of  men,  because  they  have  the  power  to  do  so ; 
and  nothing,  therefore,  but  the  willingness  of  so¬ 
ciety  is  needed  at  any  time  to  break  it  up.  But 
the  labor  system,  or  the  arrangement  of  the  condi¬ 
tions  under  which  labor  for  hire  is  performed, 
seems  to  be  rooted  in  the  constitution  of  human 
society,  and  the  oppression  or  inequity  that  is  inci¬ 
dent  to  it  appears  to  me  to  proceed  out  of  circuin- 


FIRST  EVENING . 


15 


stances  over  wliicli  society  lias  little  control,  so  far 
as  we  are  yet  able  to  perceive.  I  confess  that  I 
cannot  understand  liow  the  sentiment  of  justice, 
which  civilization  is  certainly  developing,  will  have 
power  to  interfere  with  the  operation  of  those  in¬ 
flexible  laws,  proceeding  from  a  source  of  justice 
whose  legislation  we  cannot  comprehend,  which 
have  been  imposed  upon  mankind  and  which  gov¬ 
ern,  with  a  force  stronger  than  human  law  can 
ever  have,  the  whole  organization  of  work  in  the 
world.” 

“  Yes,  I  see,”  said  the  judge  ;  “your  perplexi¬ 
ty  is  just  that  -which  one  is  placed  in  who  exam¬ 
ines  this  question  under  the  lights  only  which  our 
modern  science  of  political  economy  throws  upon 
it.  A  man  who  would  be  hopeful  for  humanity 
wTill  not  find  much  encouragement  there.  I  used 
to  be  troubled  very  greatly  until  I  began  to  see, 
as  I  see  clearly  now,  that  the  labor  question  be¬ 
longs  but  partly,  not  wholly,  to  political  economy, 
and  that  more  is  assumed  for  that  science  than  any 
true  economist  would  claim,  when  we  remit  the 
question  wholly  to  it  for  determination,  as  we  are 
apt  to  think  that  we  must  do.  I  am  profoundly 
a  believer  in  political  economy ;  that  is  to  say,  I 
am  thoroughly,  in  the  main,  a  disciple  of  those 
doctrines,  political  and  social,  which  are  grounded 
upon  our  systematic  modern  analysis  of  the  crea¬ 
tion  and  distribution  of  wealth.  But  political 


16 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


economy  is,  or  ought  to  be,  strictly  what  may  b(7 
called  a  systematic  science — a  formulation,  merely, 
of  facts  as  they  exist.  It  does  not  embrace,  by 
very  far,  even  in  the  branches  to  which  it  relates, 
the  whole  of  social  philosophy,  because  that  ex¬ 
tends  to  the  searching  out  of  causes  and  forces  be¬ 
hind  and  superior  to  existing  conditions  and  pres¬ 
ent  facts.  In  the  flush  of  enthusiasm  produced 
by  the  revelations  that  it  has  made  to  society  with¬ 
in  the  last  century,  there  is  a  tendency  now  to  ele¬ 
vate  political  economy,  which  lias  no  right  to  be 
anything  else  than  a  systematic,  scientific  formu¬ 
lation  of  certain  existing  social  facts,  into  a  social 
philosophy,  and  that,  I  am  sure,  is  a  great  mistake. 

“  However,  this  is  not  exactly  to  the  point  of 
the  question  we  are  discussing.  Let  me  go  hack 
to  my  proposition,  that  the  labor  question  belongs 
but  partly  to  political  economy,  and  cannot  be  re¬ 
mitted  for  its  solution  altogether  to  the  laws  which 
that  science  has  determined.  It  belongs  in  that 
domain  a  little  more,  perhaps,  but  not  much  more, 
after  all,  than  did  the  slavery  question,  which,  on 
one  side  of  it,  was  a  stupendous  economical  ques¬ 
tion,  and  dealt  with  as  such.  But  we  should  have 
waited  very  long  for  the  forces  which  the  political 
economist  is  studying  to  bring  about  a  solution  of 
it ;  longer,  at  least,  than  the  civilized  communi¬ 
ties  of  mankind  have  been  found  willing  to  wait. 
And  so,  in  like  manner,  I  believe,  the  simple  jus- 


FIRST  EVENING. 


17 


tice  of  human  society,  as  its  education  grows,  is 
going  to  give  every  laborer  bis  due  sliare  of  what 
labor  produces — more  fairly  at  least  than  the  ma¬ 
jority  have  it  now. 

“  You  do  not  see,  you  say,  that  this  labor  ques¬ 
tion  is  immediately  sequent  to  the  question  of 
slavery,  and  you  view  it  as  not  belonging  in  the 
same  category  of  human  wrongs  or  inequities. 
But  I  am  sure,  if  you  consider  a  moment,  you  will 
concede  that  labor  for  hire,  under  the  conditions 
which  now  exist,  partakes,  or  may  partake,  very 
considerably,  of  the -nature  of  slavery.” 

“  Oh,  no!”  I  exclaimed,  “that  is  surely  an 
exaggerated  statement.  There  is,  of  course,  an 
oppressive  inequality,  very  often,  in  the  relation¬ 
ship  between  the  employer  and  the  employed,  but 
it  has  hardly  a  similitude  to  that  terribly  degrad¬ 
ing  subjugation  of  one  man  to  another  which 
slavery  involves.” 

“Wait  a  moment,”  rejoined  the  judge.  “Let 
me  ask  you  to  give  a  definition  of  slavery.” 

“  I  should  say,  in  brief,  that  it  is  the  forcible 
reduction  of  one  man  to  a  condition  in  w7hicli  he 
is  regarded  and  dealt  with  as  the  property  of  an¬ 
other.” 

“Yo;  that  is  the  form,  only,  which  slavery 
wears  when  it  accepts  the  name  of  slavery ;  it  is 
„  not  the  essential  fact  in  it.  The  real  essence  of 
slavery,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  coercing  of  a  man 


18 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


to  yield  tlie  labor  of  his  hands,  or  the  service  of 
his  faculties,  to  the  benefit  of  another  man,  with¬ 
out  freedom  or  power  to  exact  an  equivalent  re¬ 
turn  ;  because,  with  some  few  exceptions,  that  is 
all  which  renders  the  enslaving  of  one  man  by 
another  an  object  of  desire.  The  motive  of  slave¬ 
holding,  as  a  rule,  we  must  look  for  in  the  gain, 
or  the  supposed  gain,  that  is  to  be  got  by  it.  The 
essential  fact  of  slavery,  therefore,  is  this :  that 
it  places  one  man  in  possession  of  the  labor  of 
another  under  conditions  which  are  compulsory  on 
the  latter,  or  which  leave  him  no  freedom  or  pow¬ 
er  to  exact  an  equal  return,  and  the  statement  of 
that  fact  seems  to  be  the  truest  definition  of 
slavery  that  can  be  given.  What  say  you  ?  ” 

“  I  cannot  dispute  your  definition.” 

“  Well,  then,  we  may  fairly  say  that  any  con¬ 
dition  in  which  a  man  is  constrained  to  give  the 
benefit  of  his  labor  to  another,  and  exercises  less 
than  equal  freedom  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
terms  of  compensation  upon  which  he  does  so, 
partakes  more  or  less  of  the  nature  of  slavery. 
Whatever  difference  there  is  must  be  of  degree 
rather  than  of  kind.  Is  not  that  tme  ?  ” 

“  We  will  concede  that  it  is — at  least  until  I 
have  seen  what  conclusions  it  leads  to.” 

“  That  is  enough.  Now  let  us  see  how  far,  in 
our  present  state  of  society,  the  conditions  under 
which  capital  and  labor  operate  together  affect  the 


FIE  ST  EVENING. 


19 


freedom  of  tlie  latter.  To  do  so,  we  must  start 
with  ideas ‘well  defined.  We  must  acquire  a  clear 
notion  of  what  capital  is  and  what  its  functions 
are,  even  though  we  have  to  go  back  to  a  few 
elementary  statements,  in  order  to  set  it  with  dis¬ 
tinctness  before  our  minds. 

“  In  the  primitive  state  of  mankind,  as  we  con¬ 
ceive  it,  the  human  creature  performs  such  little 
labor  as  he  does  without  implements  to  help  his 
hands,  except  the  simplest  weapons  that  can  be 
used  for  killing,  in  the  chase,  and  he  directs  his 
labor  to  immediate  ends,  which  need  no  provision 
for  time  to  be  consumed  in  accomplishing  them. 
He  must  hunt  each  day  for  that  day’s  food,  as  the 
brutes  do.  The  objects  of  his  exertion  are  all  ob¬ 
jects  of  the  moment ;  the  means  with  which  he 
exerts  himself  are  just  those  with  which  Hature 
has  furnished  him,  ready  for  the  moment.  When 
tools  and  implements  begin  to  be  made,  either  to 
expedite  labor,  or  to  make  the  doing  of  things 
possible  which  are  not  possible  to  the  naked  hands ; 
or  when  labor  begins  to  be  applied  to  the  produc¬ 
ing  of  results  which  cannot  be  attained  until  to¬ 
morrow,  or  next  week,  or  next  month,  or  next 
year,  that  instant  civilization  begins,  and  that  in¬ 
stant  labor  is  placed  under  new  conditions.  Now, 
these  new  conditions,  under  which  civilized  labor 
is  placed,  are  what  we  must  particularly  note  and 
remember,  for  they  are  conditions  on  which  it  be- 


20 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


comes  as  dependent  as  the  new-horn  babe  is  de¬ 
pendent  on  the  sustenance  which  others  give  it. 

“  When  an  implement  is  made,  whether  axe, 
or  cart,  or  basket,  or  canoe,  or  rope,  or  whatever  it 
may  be,  up  to  the  latest  most  complicated  machine, 
the  man  who  makes  it  must  have  his  immediate 
wants,  of  food,  etc.,  in  some  way  supplied  to  him 
while  he  is  making  it,  either  from  a  store  of  his 
own,  or  from  a  store  provided  by  somebody  else, 
who  consents  to  supply  his  daily  needs  for  the 
sake  of  a  benefit  from  the  implement  when  it  is 
made.  In  the  same  way,  when  labor  is  applied  to 
the  producing  of  any  remote«or  lasting,  instead  of 
an  immediately  beneficial  result,  as  when  a  piece 
of  soil  is  cleared  and  broken  up  for  seed,  and 
corn  and  roots  are  planted  ;  or  when  herds  and 
flocks  are  got  together  in  pastures,  for  fattening 
and  for  breeding  their  increase ;  or  when  a  road  is 
made  ;  or  when  a  pack-peddler  or  a  caravan  or  a 
ship  is  sent  to  carry  things  to  some  other  place,  to 
exchange  for  other  things; — when  any  kind  of 
work,  in  fact,  is  done,  wherein  the  object  of  exer¬ 
tion  is  removed  by  some  interval  of  time  from  the 
act  of  exertion,  somebody  must  have  saved  or  accu¬ 
mulated,  out  of  the  fruits  of  past  labor,  that  which 
will  supply  the  current  wants  of  those  whose  labor 
directs  itself  to  the  remote  result.  So,  too,  when 
a  division  of  labor  has  been  brought  about,  and 
several  men  take  each  a  distinct  and  special  task 


FIRST  EVENING. 


21 


for  the  benefit  of  all,  becoming  one  a  farmer,  an¬ 
other  a  shoemaker,  another  a  weaver  of  cloth,  an¬ 
other  a  dresser  of  skins,  and  so  on,  there  must  be 
somewhere,  in  somebody’s  hands,  a  store  from 
which  they  can  draw  while  the  exchanges  between 
them  are  brought  about,  and  while  each  one  is 
partitioning  to  every  other  his  contribution  to  the 
total  wants  of  all.  Without  such  a  store  for  the 
interval  of  exchange,  onr  division  of  labor,  which 
is  the  material  measure  of  civilization  more  than 
anything  else,  would  be  impossible. 

“  1ST ow,  all  that,  whatever  it  may  be,  which  is 
so  accumulated  for  these  purposes,  and  so  used, 
is  capital.  The  nature  and  function  of  capital, 
therefore,  we  can  best  define  by  saying  that  it  is 
everything,  derived  and  accumulated  from  past 
labor,  which  enables  present  labor  to  be  employed 
in  any  such  way  that  the  beneficial  results  from  it 
have  to  be  waited  for. 

“  All  this  may  seem  trite,  but  we  need  to  set  it 
out  freshly  and  distinctly  before  us  in  the  discus¬ 
sion  we  have  engaged  in,  because  it  defines  the 
relationship  between  capital  and  labor.  It  brings 
us  face  to  face  with  one  tremendous  fact :  that 
every  hind  of  labor  which  does  not  immediately 
produce  for  the  man  who  performs  it  the  imme¬ 
diate  satisfaction  of  an  immediate  want  is  abso¬ 
lutely  dependent  upon  capital.  JNTow,  put  along¬ 
side  of  that  a  second  grim  fact,  which  no  one  will 


22 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


dispute,  viz. :  that  this  complex  social  state  which 
we  call  civilization  has  left  no  labor  to  be  done  by 
any  man  that  is  not  of  that  dependent  hind ,  or 
next  to  none.  Think  of  it!  It  cannot  be  realized 
in  an  instant.  AVe  have  to  pause  and  reflect  be¬ 
fore  we  can  fairly  conceive  the  remoteness  with 
which  almost  every  object  for  which  we,  any  of 
us,  exert  ourselves,  is  separated  nowadays  from 
the  exertion  that  we  make,  or  the  labor  that  we 
perform,  to  attain  it,  no  matter  what  may  be  the 
particular  division  of  human  labor  to  which  we 
have  assigned  ourselves.  AVe  do  something  for 
somebody  in  the  next  street,  who  does  something 
else  for  somebody  else  in  the  next  town,  who  does 
something  else  for  somebody  else  in  another  State, 
who  does  something  else  for  somebody  else  in 
New  York,  or  in  Boston,  or  in  Chicago,  or  in  New 
Orleans,  or  in  London,  or  in  Paris,  or  in  Calcutta, 
who  does  something  else  for  somebody  else  on  an 
Illinois  farm,  who  grows  the  wheat  that  we  make 
our  bread  of,  or  on  a  South  Carolina  plantation,  who 
grows  the  cotton  that  is  in  our  shirts,  or  on  a  Texas 
pasture-range,  who  fattens  the  beef  that  we  con¬ 
sume,  or  in  an  English  factory,  who  weaves  cloth 
for  our  coats,  or  in  a  Chinese  tea-garden,  who 
grows  the  herb  which  solaces  our  evening  repast. 
AVhat  man  in  the  civilized  world  can  trace  the 
intricate,  devious,  infinitely  complicated  way  in 
which  the  particular  result  of  his  particular  labor 


FIRST  EVENING. 


23 


is  raveled  into  a  thousand  threads,  by  our  modern 
division  of  labor  and  the  wonderful  system  of 
modern  commercial  exchange,  to  be  woven  in  and 
out  with  millions  of  other  threads,  raveled  and 
spun  in  the  same  way  from  the  work  of  innumer¬ 
able  other  hands,  and  so  stretched  hither  and 
thither,  all  over  the  globe,  to  reach  the  ten  thou¬ 
sand  separate  objects  of  want  and  desire  for  which 
he  labors  ?  ISTo  man  can  track,  any  longer,  the 
work  which  he  sends  out  from  himself  to  a  hun¬ 
dredth  part  of  the  results  which  it  brings  back  to 
him.  He  cannot  any  longer,  if  he  would,  take 
things  at  first  hands  from  Nature,  by  the  immedi¬ 
ate  process  of  direct  labor.  Civilization  has  put 
everything  at  a  certain  remove,  and  capital,  on 
every  side  of  him,  holds  an  intermediate  agency. 

“  Here,  then,  entangled  helplessly  in  the  meshes 
of  the  vast  network  of  this  modern  organization 
of  labor  and  exchange,  stands  the  man  who  has 
hands  and  brain,  intelligence,  strength,  and  will 
to  work,  according  to  the  demand  of  Nature,  for 
what  he  needs,  but  who  stands  empty-handed — - 
with  no  accumulation  of  things  hitherto  produced 
— with  no  capital.  What  can  he  do  ?  There  are 
no  wild  creatures  any  more  within  his  reach  that 
he  can  hunt  for  food,  or  whose  skins  he  can  ap¬ 
propriate  for  clothing.  There  is  not  an  animal 
that  he  can  kill  which  is  not  the  property  of  some¬ 
body — stamped  with  the  right  of  possession  by  ac- 


24 


TALKS  ABOUT  LAB  OB. 


quirement  or  accumulation.  There  is  not  a  held 
in  which  he  can  dig  a  root,  or  pluck  an  ear  of  corn, 
or  gather  a  handful  of  fruit,  that  is  not  hedged 
with  the  same  right.  There  is  nothing  within  his 
reach  to  which  he  can  apply  his  labor,  to  make  it 
productive  for  others  and  so  exchangeable — not  a 
scrap  of  raw  material,  whether  metal,  or  wood,  or 
stone,  or  even  clay — that  is  not  ticketed  and  la¬ 
beled  <  Hands  off !  ’  The  mark  of  appropriation, 
the  sign  and  seal  of  capital,  are  on  everything 
around  him.  Except  with  the  consent  of  the  sov¬ 
ereigns  of  this  universal  domain,  if  he  so  much  as 
attempts  to  apply  his  hands  to  any  productive 
work,  he  is  a  trespasser  and  a  thief.  What  can  he 
do  \  Why,  nothing,  hut  helplessly  cry  out  to  those 
who  hold  this  environment  of  capital  around  him : 
i  Pray  let  me  work !  let  me  have  something  to  wrork 
with  and  "work  upon  !  land  to  cultivate,  or  wood 
to  cut,  or  iron  to  forge,  or  clay  to  mould  and  burn  ! 
Give  me  a  chance  to  produce  something  that  is  ex¬ 
changeable  for  bread,  with  those  who  have  bread. 
Make  your  own  terms  with  me — the  best  terms 
that  you  can  make  with  me  and  with  my  fellows 
who,  like  me,  have  only  capacity  to  work  and  de¬ 
sire  to  work,  and  who  are  utterly  without  the 
means  1  Take  every  advantage  that  you  will  of 
the  desperate  pressure  of  our  necessities  !  Make  us 
bid  against  one  another,  until  we  bid  ourselves 
down  to  so  small  a  share  of  the  products  of  our  la- 


FIRST  EVENING. 


25 


bor,  expended  upon  your  materials,  with  your  im¬ 
plements,  that  it  will  barely  keep  our  bodies  and 
our  souls  together;  but  let  us  work,  and  not 
starve !  ’ 

“  In  God’s  name,  my  dear  sir,  is  not  the  potent 
possibility  of  oppression  that  exists  here  something 
terrible  ?  And  when  we  have  two  classes  of  men, 
with  the  possession  of  capital  on  one  side  and  the 
necessity  to  labor  on  the  other,  does  not  the  rela¬ 
tionship  between  them  partake  very  considerably 
of  the  nature  of  slavery  ? 

“  Mind  you,  I  am  not  quarreling  with  this  state 
of  things,  nor  denouncing  it.  I  am  only  stating 
the  facts  about  it.  I  recognize  it  as  being  an  in¬ 
evitable  incident  of  civilization  up  to  the  point 
that  we  have  reached  ;  for,  without  having  placed 
ourselves  under  the  conditions  that  produce  it,  we 
could  never  have  risen  above  barbarism.  But  I  do 
say  that  when  civilization  develops  so  frightful  a 
power  in  the  hands  of  one  part  of  mankind  over 
another  part,  it  is  the  business  of  civilization  to 
find  some  way  in  which  to  counteract,  or  modify, 
or  nullify  it,  and  it  cannot  have  any  other  business 
in  hand  that  is  half  so  imperative.” 

The  judge  had  risen  restlessly  from  his  seat, 
during  the  latter  part  of  his  speech,  and  was  pac¬ 
ing  the  room,  in  a  singular  state  of  excited  feeling. 
My  daughter  Kate  and  her  young  friend  had  stolen 
into  the  study,  attracted  from  their  own  topics  by 
2 


2G 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


the  warmth  and  eloquence  of  ours.  We  had  all 
listened  intently  to  the  vehement  declamation  of 
the  judge,  and,  when  he  paused,  there  was  a  mo¬ 
ment  of  thoughtful  silence.  I  was  moved  a  good 
deal  by  what  he  had  said,  but  not  altogether  con¬ 
vinced  of  the  soundness  of  his  view. 

“  Your  statement,”  said  I,  after  a  little  reflec¬ 
tion,  “  your  statement  of  the  situation  as  between 
labor  and  capital  seems  to  me  to  be  a  theoretical 
and  an  extreme  one.  You  represent  the  depend¬ 
ence  of  labor  upon  capital,  but  you  do  not  take 
into  account  the  reciprocal  dependence  of  capital 
upon  labor,  which  is  just  as  rigorous  a  fact,  and 
which,  if  it  be  not  quite  equal  to  the  other,  goes 
certainly  very  far  toward  neutralizing  it.  The 
man  of  capital  must  have  the  help  of  the  man  of 
labor  to  make  his  capital  productive  for  him,  just 
as  much  as  the  laborer  must  have  the  help  of  the 
capitalist  to  put  him  in  the  way  of  performing 
productive  work.  The  dependence  is  mutual, 
and  there  is  a  pressure  of  necessity  on  each  side  to 
compel  them  to  terms  with  one  another,  in  the 
matter  of  dividing  whatever  maybe  the  joint  prod¬ 
uct  from  what  they  severally  contribute.  You 
leave  this  important  fact  out  of  the  case,  and  pre¬ 
sent  it  one-sidedly,  which  is  not  fair  nor  true  argu¬ 
ment.” 

“  Oh,  no,”  cried  the  judge,  “  I  do  not  forget  the 
dependence  of  capital  upon  labor — for  its  gains  ; 


FIRST  EVENING. 


27 


tlie  necessity  under  which,  they  both  act  together 
in  production ;  the  self-interest  which  brings  one 
into  cooperation  with  the  other,  when  the  two 
exist  apart,  in  separate  hands.  I  do  not  forget, 
and  I  have  no  wish  to  put  out  of  sight  nor  to  be¬ 
little  the  facts  that  you  refer  to.  I  should  have 
come  to  them  in  a  moment. 

“  The  common  interest  which  associates  capi¬ 
tal  and  labor  together  in  production  is  a  certain 
fact,  but  we  must  take  care  to  analyze  it  and  see 
its  parts.  I  used  to  be  deceived  by  it,  and  trusted 
to  it  for  a  comfortable  settlement  of  this  whole 
matter  of  justice  to  labor,  until  I  happened  one 
day  to  think  what  a  mighty  difference  there  is  be¬ 
tween  capital  and  labor  in  the  abstract  and  the 
capitalist  and  the  laborer  in  the  concrete.  If  you 
place  capital  and  labor  together  in  the  same  hand 
— let  the  same  man,  that  is,  be  both  laborer  and 
capitalist  at  once — there  is  then  no  possible  issue 
between  them  ;  their  identification  in  interest  and 
their  mutuality  of  dependence  are  complete  ;  and 
this  is  their  natural  state  of  union — the  one  which 
we  theoretically  contemplate  whenever  we  prove 
to  ourselves  that  there  is  natural  justice  in  the  re¬ 
lationship  between  them.  But  put  them  apart — 
dissociate  them  so  far  as  their  personal  representa¬ 
tion  is  concerned,  making  the  laborers  one  class 
and  the  capitalists  another  class ;  what  then?  You 
have  put  persons  in  the  place  of  things,  now,  and 


28 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


the  situation  is  wholly  changed.  You  are  no 
longer  merely  dealing  with-  the  inter-operative 
functions  of  capital  and  labor  in  the  abstract,  but 
you  are  dealing  with  them  under  the  dominion  of 
concrete  human  motives  and  passions,  human  ne¬ 
cessities  and  desires,  and  all  the  nice  balance  which 
existed  between  them  before  is  totally  destroyed  by 
interference.  The  man  of  wealth,  be  it  a  greater  or 
less  accumulation,  is  ordinarily  covetous  of  more, 
and  so  feels  that  it  is  for  his  interest  to  employ 
what  he  possesses  as  capital,  to  produce  an  in¬ 
crease.  lie  is  commonly  actuated  in  this  by  no 
immediate  necessity,  but  by  a  desire,  or  by  pru¬ 
dential  fore-calculations  for  the  future.  But  the 
man  without  wealth,  who  possesses  nothing  save 
the  ability  to  work — how  enormously  different  are 
the  forces  that  act  upon  him  I  There  are  no  alter¬ 
natives  in  his  case  ;  no  region  of  choice  within 
which  he  is  free,  except  that  narrow  one  which  has 
death  on  one  side  of  it.  lie  must  employ  his 
labor  productively  in  order  to  live.  1 1  is  interest 
in  the  matter  is  the  interest  which  a  man  has  in 
the  preservation  of  his  life,  and  of  other  lives  that 
are  dear  to  him  and  dependent  on  him.  When, 
therefore,  you  bring  these  two  together,  to  make 
terms  of  copartnership  with  one  another  in  the 
business  of  production,  you  have  love  of  gain  to 
urge  the  one  and  love  of  life  to  force  the  other. 
Behind  the  one  you  have  prudence,  avarice  and 


FIRST  EVENING. 


29 


many  selfish  desires ;  behind  the  other  you  have 
hunger,  misery,  starvation,  death.  On  one  side 
you  have  a  powerful  human  motive  ;  on  the  other 
side  a  desperate  human  necessity.  Will  you  say 
that  the  two  contracting  parties  stand  upon  an 
equal  footing  in  their  negotiation  ?  Will  you  ex¬ 
pect  to  keep  equity  in  the  middle  of  such  unequal 
forces  as  these  1  Will  you  trust,  your  laws  of  politi¬ 
cal  economy  to  secure  justice  to  labor  in  such  a 
situation  as  this  %  No,  sir.  It  will  not  do.  Those 
are  the  theorists,  in  this  matter,  who  talk  of  capital 
and  labor  as  though  they  were  merely  dead  names 
of  things ;  as  though  they  were  nothing  more  than 
the  £ x ’  and  the  ‘y’  of  a  simple  equation;  as 
though  there  were  not  a  living,  breathing,  palpi¬ 
tating  humanity  represented  in  them,  whose  needs 
and  misfortunes  and  passions  complicate  the  prob¬ 
lem.  I  am  not  the  theorist,  for  I  face  the  facts  as 
the  world  shows  them  to  me,  and  they  tell  me 
that  it  is  an  idle  dream  to  look  for  fair  dividends 
to  be  made  between  capital  and  labor  by  simple 
operation  of  the  mutual  interests  which  bring  them 
together.” 

“  But,  my  dear  judge,”  said  I,  u  there  certainly 
is  an  extremeness  in  your  statements.  You  will 
not  claim  that  the  situation  you  have  described  is 
actually  and  commonly  the  situation  in  which  the 
laborer  makes  his  bargain  with  the  capitalist. 
How  often  does  starvation  really  occur,  even 


30 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


among  the  poorest  and  most  unfortunate  of  man¬ 
kind,  and  how  often  does  it  appear  so  imminent 
to  any  laborer  that  his  fear  of  it  will  actually 
dictate  the  wages  to  which  he  submits  ?  You  must 
concede,  I  think,  that ‘the  situation  of  ‘desperate 
necessity 3  is  an  exceptional  and  not  the  common 
one,  and  that  when  it  does  occur,  to  any  large  ex¬ 
tent,  it  is  produced  by  causes  of  general  misfor¬ 
tune  or  calamity  which  have  disturbed  the  whole 
productive  organization  of  society.” 

“  Yes,  but  why  is  this  so  ?  It  is  because  here, 
as  in  many  other  instances,  the  heart  of  man  is 
more  generous  than  the  social  systems  he  has 
framed.  I  think  well  of  human  nature,  on  the 
whole,  and  I  believe  that  kindness  toward  a  fellow¬ 
being  is  more  in  accordance  with  our  nature  than 
cruelty  ;  though  it  has  to  be  developed,  like  every 
other  moral  disposition  in  man,  by  intelligent  per¬ 
ceptions.  That  is  the  ground  on  which  I  rest  my 
hope  for  humanity  in  the  very  matter  that  we  are 
speaking  of.  We  eke  out,  now,  a  tyrannical  and 
heartless  theoretic  economy  with  practical  charities 
and  generosities  that  make  it  tolerable.  The 
change  to  be  brought  about  is  this :  that  we  must 
reduce  the  generosity  to  a  system,  not  of  gener¬ 
osity,  but  of  justice  and  right.  According  to  the 
theory  of  our  wages  system,  the  fortunate  part  of 
mankind  which  has  possessed  itself,  in  one  way 
and  another,  of  almost  all  the  instruments  and  111a- 


FIRST  EVENING. 


31 


terials  and  adjuncts  of  productive  labor,  has  a  right 
to  compel  the  other  part  to  perform  work  for  just 
that  least  and  lowest  share  of  the  products  of  labor 
which  the  competition  of  their  bodily  necessities 
will  force  them  to  accept ;  but  the  practice  of  the 
system  is  not  often  as  heartless  as  the  theory  of  it. 
It  seldom  happens  that  the  men  of  capital  drive 
the  hardest  and  sharpest  bargain  that  they  might 
with  the  men  of  labor.  It  seldom  happens  that 
their  cruel  power  is  exercised  to  the  terrible  ex¬ 
treme  which  it  might  be  carried  to.  It  seldom 
happens  that  the  vast  army  of  empty-handed  men 
and  women,  whose  bread  to-morrow  depends  upon 
their  chance  to  work  to-day,  are  desperately  driven 
to  bid  each  other  down  to  quite  such  fragments 
and  crumbs  of  subsistence  as  they  might  be,  if 
there  were  no  humanity  nor  generosity  to  leaven 
the  brutal  selfishness  of  the  theory  of  the  system 
to  which  they  are  subjected.  Capital  is  all  the 
time  giving  something  more  of  a  share  of  the  pro¬ 
duction  which  it  controls  to  labor  than  it  might 
give,  in  somewhat  higher  wages  than  it  might 
pay ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  broad,  grand  organi¬ 
zation  of  what  we  call  philanthropy  and  benevo¬ 
lence  is  overlaid  upon  the  system  of  our  social 
economy,  to  mitigate  its  harshness  and  heartless¬ 
ness.  Contrary  to  their  usual  wont,  men  practise 
in  this  matter  of  their  responsibilities  toward  one 
another  better  than  their  maxims  prescribe,  and  I 


32 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


feel  assured,  by  a  thousand  signs,  that  the  heart  of 
humanity  is  very  nearly  right  and  ripe  for  some¬ 
thing  juster  and  fairer  than  the  old  institutions  of 
labor.  It  is  only  waiting  now  for  certain  strong 
habits  of  view  which  it  has  acquired  to  be  cor¬ 
rected  by  truer  instincts  and  a  larger  enlighten¬ 
ment.” 

“As  I  understand  you,  then,”  said  I,  “your 
view  is  that  capital  holds  over  labor  an  oppressive 
advantage,  which  is  not  used,  as  a  rule,  to  the  full 
extent,  but  which  it  asserts,  nevertheless,  with  too 
much  sanction  from  the  economical  philosophy  of 
our  day,  an  unlimited  right  to  use ;  and  your  de¬ 
mand  is,  that  the  claim  of  right  to  exercise  so  op¬ 
pressive  a  power  shall  be  condemned  and  vetoed 
by  the  just  judgment  of  society.” 

“  That  is  it.  You  have  it  exactly.  And  now 
— but  here  have  I  talked  the  whole  evening  away,” 
cried  the  judge,  looking  at  his  watch,  “  and  made 
you  all  dumb,  very  nearly,  with  my  uncivil  lectur¬ 
ing.  I  am  ashamed  of  myself ;  but  you  threw  me 
on  a  subject  which  runs  away  with  me.  I  hope, 
ladies,  you  will  not  think  that  I  am  always  such  a 
rattle-tongued  egotist  as  I  have  been  to-night.” 

And  so  he  went  on  with  many  laughing  apolo¬ 
gies  until  my  wife  had  to  put  a  stop  to  them,  and 
compelled  him  to  understand  that  the  talk  of  the 
evening  had  interested  her  so  greatly  that  she 
should  be  impatient  for  a  continuation  of  it.  Nor 


FIRST  EVENING. 


33 


would  we  any  of  us  let  him  go  until  he  had  prom¬ 
ised  to  come  again,  on  the  morrow,  and  resume 
the  topic  where  it  had  been  left.  On  that  promise 
we  bade  him  good-night,  and,  with  hearts  that  had 
grown  much  warmer  toward  him  within  the  past 
hour  or  two,  we  saw  him  walk  slowly  to  his  lonely 
home. 


SECOND  EVENING. 


ABOUT  THE  EIGHTS  OF  CAPITAL. 


Might  and  Right  in  Society. — What  morally  belongs  to  Superior 
Endowments  and  Advantages. — The  Point  of  Social  Equilib¬ 
rium. — Some  Study  of  the  Modes  in  which  Wealth  is  acquired. 
— The  Judge’s  Doctrine  of  Morals  and  his  Doctrine  of 
Justice. 


Faithful  to  tlie  promise  he  had  made,  the 
judge  came  early  the  next  night,  and  found  us  all 
waiting  for  him  in  the  little  room.  My  young 
friend  John,  whom  I  discovered  to  be  a  very  sen¬ 
sible  fellow  indeed,  had  begged  the  privilege  of 
being  present  again.  lie  was  much  taken  with 
the  judge’s  talk,  although  the  conservatism  which 
is  commonly  incident  to  his  time  of  life  held  him 
back,  with  more  resistance  than  I  could  make, 
from  the  acceptance  of  the  judge’s  views.  The 
conservatism  of  young  men,  at  a  certain  stage  of 
experience,  by-the-way,  is  a  very  curious  thing; 
not  strange  at  all,  but  curious.  It  is  wholly  con¬ 
trary  to  the  impulses  of  youth  ;  but  the  contrari¬ 
ness,  you  see,  is  just  as  natural  as  the  impulses 


SECOND  EVENING. 


35 


are,  and  perhaps  a  little  more  so.  .  The  boy  is 
pretty  surely  a  radical ;  all  his  philosophy  of  life 
is  full  of  romance,  and  enthusiasm,  and  credulity. 
But  the  young  man,  having  knocked  his  head  and 
stumbled  with  his  feet  a  few  times  against  the 
hard  realities  of  the  world,  becomes  so  distrustful 
and  afraid,  very  soon,  of  his  enthusiasms,  that  he 
tries  hard  to  extinguish  them,  and  pushes  himself 
with  all  liis  might  to  the  opposite  extreme  of 
thinking  and  feeling.  Old  notions  of  things,  with 
their  wrinkles  and  their  grayness,  and  with  such 
mouldiness  even  as  they  may  have  acquired,  look 
much  wiser  and  more  venerable  than  the  sleek 
upstart  parvenues  of  doctrine  which  oppose  them, 
and  he  has  not  courage  to  refuse  them  a  respectful 
deference,  whether  they  satisfy  his  judgment  or 
not.  He  fancies  that  they  must  be  the  true  no¬ 
tions,  and  he  is  fearful  and  ashamed  of  any  revolt 
in  himself  against  their  claims,  because  he  suspects 
that  it  is  proceeding  out  of  some  lingering  boyish¬ 
ness  in  him  which  he  ought  manfully  to  get  rid 
of.  So  he  becomes  resolutely  conservative,  in  his 
ambition  to  become  manly,  and  mature,  and  dis¬ 
creet.  If  selfish  pursuits,  of  fortune  or  ambition, 
gain  possession  of  him  then,  as  they  are  apt  to  do, 
and  he  ceases  to  think  much  or  care  much  for 
things  outside  of  his  own  objects  in  life,  he  is 
more  likely  to  retain  his  conservative  attitude 
thenceforward  than  to  change  it,  simply  as  the 


36 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


effect  of  a  certain  rheumatic  rusting  and  stiffening 
of  his  nature,  rather  than  because  of  any  constitu¬ 
tional  bent  of  mind  that  he  has.  Now,  my  young 
friend  John  was  just  at  that  stage  of  his  life  when 
the  fear  of  not  being  conservatively  wise  and  pru¬ 
dent  overcame  pretty  much  all  that  was  instinctive 
and  natural  in  his  view  of  things.  Being  an  ex¬ 
cellent  fellow,  of  industry,  intelligence  and  a 
steady  character,  he  had  risen  to  quite  an  impor¬ 
tant  clerkship  in  one  of  the  iron- working  establish¬ 
ments  of  the  city,  with  reasonable  expectations  of 
a  partnership  in  time ;  and  in  that  situation,  with 
these  prospects,  of  course  he  felt  himself  in  a 
measure  responsible  to  society  for  the  defending 
and  maintaining  of  its  well-established  arrange¬ 
ments  and  institutions,  I  was  not  suq)rised,  there¬ 
fore,  to  find  him,  although  greatly  pleased  with 
the  judge,  yet  stoutly  critical  of  his  views,  and 
much  disposed  to  be  afraid  of  some  hidden  infec¬ 
tion  of  communism,  or  other  dangerous  and  de¬ 
moralizing  doctrine  in  them.  I  saw  how  it  was 
with  the  young  gentleman,  and  knew  that  the  talk 
would  do  him  good. 

“  Now,”  said  the  judge,  after  some  greetings 
and  weather  observations  and  the  like,  when  we 
had  settled  ourselves  before  the  fire,  “  if  we  are 
going  to  take  up  our  old  subject  again,  you  must 
not  let  me  prose  upon  it  as  I  did  Jast  night.  AVe 
must  have  more  of  a  conversation  and  less  of  a 


SECOND  EVENING. 


37 


lecture  this  evening,  if  you  will  help -to  keep  me 
from  forgetting  myself.” 

“  But,  you  know,”  I  suggested,  “  that  we  pre¬ 
fer  to  be  listeners  and  questioners  chiefly  in  this 
matter,  because  we  have  none  of  us  reflected  upon 
it  as  you  have  done,  nor  arrived  at  the  convictions 
about  it  which  you  have.  We  are  asking  you  to 
give  us  the  results  of  your  study  and  your  think¬ 
ing  on  the  subject,  and  to  show  us  the  course  of 
reasoning  by  wdiich  you  have  been  led  to  your 
opinions.” 

“  Yes,”  said  my  wife,  “you  must  be  generous, 
and  not  exact  measure  for  measure.” 

“Well,  well;  we’ll  not  be  ceremonious  nor 
disputatious  about  it,”  the  judge  cried ;  “  but  I 
shall  endeavor  not  to  play  quite  so  oratorical  a 
part  as  I  certainly  did  last  night.  And  now,  where 
is  our  question  ?  At  what  stage  of  argument  did 
we  drop  it  %  ” 

I  was  ready  to  answer,  but  my  wife  proved  too 
quick  for  me. 

“  Let  me  show  you,”  said  she,  “  how  far  a 
woman  can  be  interested  in  these  masculine  top¬ 
ics,  and  how  under  standingly  she  may  remember  a 
discussion  of  them.  You  had  shown  that  capital 
holds  over  labor  a  terribly  oppressive  advantage, 
which  is  dangerous  and  unjust  to  the  latter,  and 
which,  although  not  fully  exercised,  is  fully  as¬ 
serted  as  of  right,  and  with  a  sanction  from  the 


38 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR . 


economical  philosophy  of  our  time  which  ought 
not  to  be  given  to  it.” 

“You  have  stated  it  with  precision,  madam, 
and  admirably,”  said  the  judge.  “  I  am  sure  that 
no  one  can  wish  to  amend  the  statement.  Are  we 
agreed,  then,  to  this  point,  or  is  there  more  to  be 
questioned  before  we  go  further  ?  ” 

“  I  should  like  to  ask  a  question,”  said  Master 
John,  blushing  a  little  at  his  own  boldness.  “Is 
not  the  advantage  which  the  capitalist  holds,  as 
against  the  laborer  without  capital,  an  advantage 
that  belongs  to  him,  by  nature  and  by  right,  or  by 
the  intention  of  the  Creator?  Is  it  not,  I  mean, 
an  advantage  that  inevitably  accrues  to  him  by 
reason  of  some  superior  capability  that  he  is  en¬ 
dowed  with,  and  on  account  of  which  the  pos¬ 
session  of  capital  is  gathered  into  his  hands.  It 
seems  to  me  that,  inasmuch  as  men  are  not  created 
alike,  it  must  be  intended  that  each  should  have 
the  benefit  of  whatever  advantage  is  gained  for 
him  by  his  own  peculiar  faculties  or  his  own  pecul¬ 
iar  character.” 

“  This  is  an  important  question  that  you  have 
raised,”  answered  the  judge,  “  and  I  am  glad  that 
you  have  brought  it  up.  We  must  look  into  it. 
I  should  not  like  to  dispute  the  right  of  a  man  to 
appropriate  any  benefit  that  legitimately  accrues 
to  him  from  the  faculties  or  the  forces  which  God 
has  endowed  him  with.  When  I  speak  of  equity 


SECOND  EVENING. 


39 


between  men  I  do  not  mean  equality*.  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  equality  among  men  —  except 
their  equal  right  to  an  equal  opportunity  in  the 
world,  for  doing  according  to  their  capabilities 
and  according  to  whatever  moral  force  is  in  them. 
I  do  contend  for  that  equality,  but  for  nothing 
more,  and  this  is  what  I  mean  by  equity.  You 
would  not  say,  I  am  sure,  that  every  advantage 
which  one  man  possesses  over  another,  by  reason 
of  a  superior  natural  endowment,  can  be  equitably 
used  to  its  full  extent  ?  For  example,  one  is  phys¬ 
ically  larger  and  stronger  than  another,  so  that, 
if  he  chooses  to  do  so,  and  if  society  does  in  no 
way  interfere,  he  may  obtain  mastery  over  his 
fellow  by  muscular  superiority,  and  command  him 
as  a  subject  or  a  slave.  Would  you  say,  in  that 
case,  that  the  fortunately  strong  man  has  a  right 
to  all  the  advantage  over  his  fellow  which  may 
accrue  to  him  by  reason  of  his  muscular  capa¬ 
bilities  % ” 

“  Certainly  not,”  answered  John  ;  “  we  are  not 
savages.” 

“  And  if  one  man,  not  being  stronger  than  his 
fellow,  but  being  more  courageous  and  more  ener¬ 
getic  and  aggressive,  is  still  able  to  domineer  over 
him  and  to  place  him  in  a  position  of  dependence 
and  servility,  would  you  say  that  the  advantage 
which  he  thus  obtains  belongs  to  him  by  nature 
and  by  right,  and  by  the  intention  of  the  Creator, 


40 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


who  made  him  a  more  aggressive  creature  than 
his  neighbor  ?  ” 

“No,  sir,”  said  John,  after  a  little  hesitation, 
“  I  should  not.” 

“  Once  again,  then :  if  one  man,  without  being 
stronger  or  more  courageous  than  his  fellow,  is 
more  intelligent  and  inventive,  and  succeeds, 
therefore,  in  contriving  weapons  which  his  neigh¬ 
bor  cannot  resist,  and  in  protecting  himself  with 
armor  which  his  neighbor  cannot  penetrate,  so 
that  he  is  able  to  override  his  neighbor,  as  the 
mediaeval  knight  did  the  peasant,  and  to  do  as  he 
will  with  him — would  you  say  that  the  advantage 
which  accrues  in  this  way  from  a  superior  capa¬ 
bility  belongs  to  its  possessor  by  right,  and  that 
society  or  social  opinion  has  no  business  to  inter¬ 
fere  with  it  ?  ” 

“  I  do  not  think  that  I  should  say  so,”  replied 
John,  with  much  frankness ;  “  but  these  examples 
that  you  suggest  all  look  to  the  exercise  of  a 
tyrannical  brute  force,  which  civilized  society,  of 
course,  cannot  tolerate.” 

“  Yes,  but  why  ?  I  have  adduced  three  in¬ 
stances  in  which  a  man  may  be  given  the  utmost 
results  of  an  advantage  over  his  fellow-men  ob¬ 
tained  by  the  possession  of  a  superior  capability. 
In  our  first  example  the  advantage  is  a  physical 
one — that  of  muscular  strength  ;  in  the  second  it 
is  a  moral  one — that  of  courage  and  energy ;  in 


SECOND  EVENING. 


41 


the  third  it  is  an  intellectual  one — thaf>  of  knowl¬ 
edge  and  invention.  The  three  sides  of  human 
nature  are  represented  in  these  three  examples, 
and  yon  admit,  therefore,  that  there  may  accrue 
advantages  to  a  man  from  every  kind  of  capability 
that  the  human  being  can  possess  which  he  has  no 
right  to  enjoy,  or  which  society  cannot  afford  to 
concede  to  him.  hTow,  what  is  the  distinction  to 
be  drawn  between  advantages  which  rightfully  be¬ 
long  to  the  man  who  possesses  a  superior  capability 
and  those  which  do  not  rightfully  belong  to  him  ?  ” 
My  young  friend  John  could  not  answer. 

“  Perhaps  we  can  find  out,”  continued  the 
judge,  “  by  a  little  more  questioning.  '  If  the 
stronger  man  has  no  right  to  subjugate  his  fellow- 
man,  by  the  superior  strength  that  he  possesses, 
he  has  a  right,  has  he  not,  to  the  larger  product  of 
the  more  efficient  labor  which  his  superior  strength 
enables  him  to  perform  ?  ” 

“  Undoubtedly.” 

“And  the  more  energetic  and  enterprising  man 
has  a  right  to  the  enjoyment  of  what  he  achieves 
by  his  superior  activity  and  resolution,  in  fair 
competition  with  his  neighbors  \  ” 

“  Certainly.” 

v“And  the  intelligent  man  who  makes  his 
knowledge  or  his  inventive  faculty  helpful  to  him 
in  his  work,  has  a  right  to  the  benefit,  has  he 
not  ?  ” 


42 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


“  Assuredly.” 

“It  seems,  therefore,  tliat  according  to  our 
sense  of  right,  there  are  some  advantages  which 
the  man  who  is  more  capable,  in  any  wise,  than 
his  fellow,  may  justly  take  from  his  fortunate  en¬ 
dowment,  and  some  which  he  may  not  take  with 
justice.  Consequently  the  mere  fact  that  such  an 
advantage  is  placed  within  his  power  by  the  Crea¬ 
tor  who  endowed  him,  does  not  prove,  I  should 
say,  that  it  belongs  to  him  to  appropriate  at  will.” 

“  That  is  true,  I  must  admit,”  said  John. 

“Just  what  does  belong  to  him  by  right,  and 
what  does  not,”  continued  the  judge,  “  may  not  be 
so  easy  to  determine  exactly.  We  may  safely  say, 
however,  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  the  benefit  of 
every  advantage,  accruing  to  him  from  any  kind 
of  superior  capability,  which  is  not  a  disadvantage 
to  his  fellow-man,  or  which  is  not  exercised  at  the 
expense  of  his  fellow.” 

We  all  assented. 

“  I  think,  too,  that  the  converse  of  this  propo¬ 
sition  is  equally  true,  and  that  no  man  has  a  just 
right  to  any  use  of  any  advantage  in  this  world 
which  takes  aught  from  the  advantages  or  oppor¬ 
tunities  of  any  other  man.  But  this  may  raise 
nice  questions  in  some  cases,  and  I  will  not  start 
them  by  asserting  it.  The  wings  of  genius  would 
sometimes  be  clipped  if  that  were  made  the  rule. 
It  is  enough  for  our  present  inquiry  that  we  settle 


SECOND  EVENING. 


43 


so  much  as  we  have  settled ;  that  might  of  any 
kind  does  not  make  right,  whether  the  potentiality 
in  question  he  that  of  strength,  or  courage,  or  cun¬ 
ning,  of  industry,  or  economy,  or  enterprise.  The 
great  fact  to  he  recognized — the  fact  essential  to 
human  civilization — is  this:  that  every  gift  to  a 
man,  in  his  body,  or  in  his  mind,  or  in  his  soul,  is 
an  obligation  as  well  as  a  gift ;  that  he  holds  it  for 
his  fellows  as  well  as  for  himself,  and  that  each 
one  is  so  far  his  brother’s  keeper  that  he  is  bound 
to  take  care,  at  least,  that  his  brother  be  not 
harmed  nor  hindered  by  him.” 

“  That  is  good  doctrine,”  exclaimed  my  wife. 

“It  is  the  philosophy  of  Christianity  on  its  hu¬ 
man  side,”  said  I. 

“You  are  right,”  confessed  John,  “and  I  see 
that  the  point  which  I  raised  against  your  argu¬ 
ment  of  last  night  was  not  well  considered.” 

“It  is  not  necessary,  then,”  said  the  judge, 
“  to  go  further  into  this  part  of  our  subject.  But 
I  think  it  may  do  us  some  good,  nevertheless,  to 
consider  how  it  is,  under  what  circumstances  and 
through  what  causes,  of  superior  capability  or 
otherwise,  that  the  capital  accumulated  by  human 
industry  comes  to  be  gathered,  for  the  most  part, 
into  the  hands  of  a  comparatively  few  men,  while 
the  rest  hold  none  at  all  or  very  little.  When  we 
speak  of  capitalists,  we  usually  refer  to  the  rich 
men  of  the  community,  whose  wealth  is,  more  or 


44 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


less,  employed  productively,  either  by  themselves 
or  by  others  to  whom  they  lend  it.  Mre  must  re¬ 
member,  however,  that  the  term  capitalists  includes 
a  great  multitude  besides,  who  are  not  to  be  con¬ 
sidered  rich  men,  but  who  possess  some  surplus, 
more  or  less,  from  a  fewT  dollars  to  a  few  thousands 
of  dollars  in  efficient  value,  which  they  employ  in 
connection  with  their  own  labor,  as  tradesmen,  as 
manufacturers,  as  farmers,  as  mechanics,  etc.  AVe 
must  put  them  all,  of  every  degree  together,  to 
constitute  what  can  properly  be  called  the  capital¬ 
ist  class,  as  distinguished  from  the  non-capitalist 
laboring  class.  Let  us  do  so,  imaginatively,  and 
survey  the  congregation  which  has  the  Rothschilds 
and  the  Astors  at  one  extreme,  while  at  the  other 
extreme  are  the  humble  blacksmiths  and  shoe¬ 
makers,  whose  little  capital  is  just  that  which  will 
furnish  them  with  shops  and  tools,  and  which  will 
buy  the  material  that  goes  into  a  job  of  work  in 
advance  of  its  being  paid  for,  besides  furnishing 
food  while  the  work  is  being  done.  Taking  them 
all  together,  I  wish  to  consider  a  moment  the 
various  ways  in  which  they  have  severally  become 
possessed  of  their  capital. 

“  First  of  all,  there  is  the  capital  that  has  been 
accumulated  in  the  hands  that  hold  it  by  industry 
and  economy;  by  hard  work,  producing  as  much 
as  possible,  and  by  saving  or  unwastefui  habits, 
consuming  as  little  as  may  be.  Most  of  the  smaller 


SECOND  EVENING. 


45 


capitals  are  of  this  description,  and  they  are  held 
by  the  highest  kind  of  right,  because  they  repre¬ 
sent  a  surplus  of  actual  production,  retained  by  and 
belonging  to  the  men  whose  exertion  produced  it. 
The  largest  rights  that  can  be  claimed  for  capital 
must  be  conceded  to  those  who  hold  it  by  this 
tenure. 

“  Next,  there  is  the  capital  that  accrues  to  those 
whom  we  call  men  of  superior  business  capability, 
by  the  operation,  on  a  large  scale,  of  the  faculty 
which  they  possess  of  organizing  and  directing 
productive  industry ;  of  giving  the  highest  effi¬ 
ciency  to  it  in  any  department,  and  of  practically 
perfecting  the  systematic  economy  of  labor  and 
its  exchanges.  Also  that  which  accrues  to  those 
who  improve  the  arts  of  industry  by  discovery 
and  invention,  and  to  those  who  extend  its  fields 
and  render  its  economical  relationships  more  in¬ 
timate,  by  enterprising  and  sagacious  undertak¬ 
ings.  The  capital  which  accrues  in  these  ways  to 
men  of  faculty  and  energy,  under  the  just  limita- 
.  tions  that  we  have  settled  upon,  is  as  honestly 
gotten  and  as  rightfully  held  as  the  other. 

“  After  this,  there  comes  the  capital  that  is  ac¬ 
quired  in  the  hands  of  those  who  possess  it  by 
what  we  call  successful  speculation  ;  by  shrewdly 
or  sagaciously  taking  advantage  of  opportunities 
in  trade  which  are  produced  by  circumstances  out¬ 
side  of  themselves,  and  relative  to  which  they 


46 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOK. 


have  no  agency,  except  that  of  looking  out  for 
them  and  detecting  them.  The  capital  thus  got¬ 
ten  together  seems  to  me  to  he  of  very  dubious 
tenure  and  the  rights  morally  attaching  to  it  very 
doubtful.  In  the  hands  that  hold  it,  it  does  not, 
either  directly  or  indirectly,  represent  production, 
but  acquisition.  It  is  acquired,  generally  speak¬ 
ing,  at  the  expense  of  others.  "While  the  faculties 
that  belong  to  the  thrifty  mechanic,  the  energetic 
manufacturer,  the  ingenious  inventor  and  the 
sagacious  projector,  are  all  useful  and  beneficial  to 
society,  the  faculty  of  the  speculator  is  not  so  at 
all,  but  only  beneficial  to  himself.  It  enables  him 
to  gain  possession  of  that  which  he  lias  in  no  way 
helped  to  produce.  It  is  a  kind  of  predatory 
talent,  and  deserves,  I  think,  very  little  admira¬ 
tion  or  respect.  In  many  cases  the  exercise  of  it 
is  not  morally  to  be  distinguished  from  adroit 
theft ;  in  some  cases  it  is  meaner  and  more  despi¬ 
cable  than  theft.  The  mode  of  robbery  which  the 
footpad  and  the  burglar  pursue  is  an  honorable 
and  an  honest  one  compared  with  the  villainous 
stratagems  that  are  contrived  by  the  gambling 
speculators  of  the  stock-market  and  the  grain- 
market.  Though  society  tolerates  the  robbery 
that  is  committed  by  a  speculative  ‘  corner 5  and 
condemns  robbery  committed  on  the  highway 
with  a  pistol,  the  first  is  the  meaner  theft  of  the 
two,  and  the  more  detestable.  Its  indirectness 


SECOND  EVENING . 


47 


has  confused  the  moral  notions  of  mankind ;  but 
some  day,  I  trust,  we  shall  have  clearer  ideas  about 
it  prevailing  in  society. 

“By  another  kind  of  acquisition,  capital  is 
deposited,  so  to  speak,  in  the  hands  of  those  who 
become  possessors  of  it,  without  any  agency  at  all 
on  their  own  part,  either  honest  or  dishonest, 
either  prudential,  or  sagacious,  or  crafty.  They  are 
only  passive  recipients  of  what  fortune,  or  good 
luck,  as  we  call  it,  has  thrown  upon  them.  Of  such 
capitalists  there  are  two  classes :  The  first  is  made 
up  of  those  who  inherit  an  accumulation  of  wealth. 
Their  own  exertions  have  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  acquisition  of  it.  It  has  passed  into  their 
possession  either  by  gift,  or  under  ordinances  of 
society  which  are  wholly  founded  upon  considera¬ 
tions  of  expediency.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
natural  right  of  inheritance,  touching  any  kind  of 
desirable  possession,  whether  it  be  a  house,  or  a 
public  office,  or  an  honorable  title.  There  is  no  in¬ 
herent  reason  of  justice  which  determines  that  a 
son  shall  become  possessed  of  the  wealth  which  his 
father  has  acquired,  when  the  father  dies.  Still 
less  is  there  any  naturally  just  reason  which  deter¬ 
mines  that  the  wealth  accumulated  by  a  man  dur¬ 
ing  his  life  shall  pass,  when  he  dies,  to  the  living 
person  of  nearest  kinship  to  him  in  blood,  what¬ 
ever  the  remove  may  be.  The  law  which  dictates 
this  transmission  of  property  by  inheritance  is  one 


48 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


purely  of  human  institution.  Thus  far  in  the 
development  of  society,  men  have  agreed,  and  with 
undoubted  prudence,  that  such  an  arrangement  is 
practically  the  best,  for  the  preservation  of  social 
order  and  for  the  conservation  of  social  stability  ; 
but  at  some  future  time  the  agreement  in-  society 
about  the  disposition  to  be  made  by  law’,  when  a 
man  dies,  of  such  wealth  as  his  exertions  have 
accumulated,  may  be  very  different,  perhaps.  It 
certainly  can  be  so  with  perfect  justice,  because 
the  arrangement,  as  I  conceive,  is  one  to  be  gov¬ 
erned  entirely  by  the  interest  and  ^veil-being  of 
society,  as  determined,  at  any  time,  by  its  condi¬ 
tion  or  by  the  general  judgment  of  its  members. 
If  the  support  and  education  of  children  until  they 
arrive  at  a  mature  age,  and  the  decent  support  of 
a  surviving  widow,  are  provided  for  out  of  the 
estate  of  a  deceased  husband  and  father — who  is 
the  responsible  protector  of  these  dependents 
while  they  are  dependent  necessarily,  and  not 
longer — natural  justice  wrould  seem  to  be  fully 
satisfied.  At  all  events,  even  if  the  possessor  of 
inherited  wealth  be  fully  entitled  to  the  luxury 
of  living  and  to  the  exemption  from  necessitated 
labor  which  it  affords  him,  there  cannot  conceiv¬ 
ably  accrue  to  him  from  it  such  rights  as  must 
attach  to  the  accidental  possession  if  we  concede, 
sir,  that  the  advantages  which  the  man  with  capi¬ 
tal  holds  over  the  man  without  capital  are  rights. 


SECOND  EVENING. 


49 


The  question  here  is  an  important  one,'  because  a 
very  large  part  of  the  capital  accumulated  in  the 
world  is  held  by  this  tenure  of  inheritance. 

“  Much  the  same  may  be  said  concerning  the 
second  class  of  those  who  become  possessors  of 
capital  with  no  more,  or  hardly  more,  than  a  pas¬ 
sive  agency  on  their  own  part  in  the  acquisition 
of  it.  This  class,  which  is  a  large  one,  is  made  up 
of  men  who,  possessing  by  actual  acquisition  some 
property  of  small  value  originally,  have  a  great 
accretion  of  exchangeable  value  added  to  it,  through 
the  incidental  effect  of  labor  performed  by  others 
around  them,  or  through  an  increase  of  neighbor¬ 
ing  population,  or  through  some  such  cause  for¬ 
eign  to  their  own  exertions.  The  property  in 
which  such  an  accretion  of  exchangeable  value  oc¬ 
curs  is  usually  property  in  land,  or  real  estate,  as 
we  call  it.  A  man  becomes  possessed,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  of  a  piece  of  land,  to  which  no  other  value 
attaches,  in  the  first  instance,  than  the  productive 
value  of  its  soil.  Blit  a  city  grows  up  around  it, 
and  industry  and  commerce  are  so  concentrated 
about  the  spot  in  which  this  piece  of  land  happens 
to  lie  that  mere  space,  in  square  inches  and  square 
feet,  acquires  just  there  a  great  artificial  value, 
relatively  to  the  value  of  other  things.  By  selling 
his  land,  or  by  taking  rent  for  its  use,  the  man 
becomes  rich — becomes  largely  possessed  of  capi¬ 
tal,  if  he  chooses  to  employ  it  as  such — without 
3 


50 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOK. 


any  exertion  of  his  own,  and  oftentimes  without 
any  fore-calculation  even  of  the  causes  which  op¬ 
erated  to  give  value  to  his  land.  Now,  I  am  not 
going  to  raise  a  question  as  to  his  right  to  the 
wealth  which  accrues  to  him  in  this  way,  although 
it  is  very  much  of  a  question  whether  private 
property  in  land  should  exist  at  all.  I  certainly 
cannot,  for  myself,  satisfactorily  refute  those  cogent 
arguments  which  sustain  the  doctrine  that  the  soil 
and  surface  of  the  earth  are  the  common  property 
of  its  inhabitants  ;  that  individuals  can  rightfully 
appropriate  nothing  more  than  the  use  of  such 
portions  of  soil  and  superficial  space  as  they  do 
use,  and  can  only  do  that  with  the  consent  and 
under  the  control  of  the  community  and  state  in 
which  they  live.  In  this  view,  the  only  right  of 
property  which  a  man  can  have  in  land  is  that 
relating  to  the  value  which  he  creates  in  it,  or 
upon  it,  by  his  own  productive  exertions ;  for  all 
such  fixed  improvements  as  he  makes,  by  clearing, 
by  draining,  by  fertilizing,  by  inclosing,  by  erect¬ 
ing  buildings,  etc.,  are  as  certainly  his  own  as  the 
movable  things  which  his  labor  has  produced ; 
but  any  other  ‘  real  estate  ’  than  that  belongs  very 
doubtfully  to  any  individual.  However,  we  need 
not,  as  I  said,  raise  the  question  now.  The  only 
point  which  I  wish  to  make  is  this :  that  when 
wealth  is  gathered,  as  so  much  of  the  wealth  of 
the  world  is  gathered,  into  the  hands  that  hold  it  at 


SECOND  EVENING. 


51 


any  given  time,  by  mere  accretion  of  relative  value 
in  some  piece  of  land  which  a  man  has  acciden¬ 
tally  acquired,  and  when  that  accretion  is  inci¬ 
dentally  brought  about  by  the  operation  of  human 
energies  which  the  man  himself  has  very  likely 
contributed  nothing  to,  it  cannot  be,  in  such  cases, 
that  the  possessor  of  this  wealth  becomes  endowed 
by  it  with  any  such  rights  as  our  young  friend 
proposes  to  concede  to  the  capitalist,  and  which 
are  practically  conceded  to  him  in  the  politico- 
economical  philosophy  of  the  present  day.  It  can¬ 
not  be  so,  because  we  cannot  possibly  reconcile 
such  an  idea  with  our  sense  of  justice. 

“  There  is  only  one  more  way  in  which  capital 
is  acquired  that  I  must  notice.  It  is  the  method 
of  outright,  recognized  dishonesty ;  by  cheating 
and  overreaching,  by  adulteration  and  deception, 
by  bribery  and  corruption  ;  by  practising  upon 
the  ignorance,  the  credulity,  or  the  carelessness  of 
men,  and  by  all  the  many  knavish  tricks  which 
evade  or  defy  our  criminal  laws,  and  which  the 
technicalities  of  law  often  make  an  actual  cover 
for.  It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  ask  what  just 
rights  belong  to  the  possessors  of  capital  acquired 
in  these  ways,  as  attaching  to  the  advantages  which 
they  derive  from  it ;  because,  of  course,  they  have 
none.  It  is  obvious  that  their  possession  of  what 
they  hold  is  due  merely  to  the  toleration  by  so¬ 
ciety  of  a  recognized  injustice  which  it  is  impotent 


52 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


as  jet  to  prevent.  But  it  would  be  sickening,  I 
am  afraid,  to  inquire  bow  much  of  the  existing 
capital  of  tlie  world  is  held  in  the  bands  of  men 
who  have  acquired  it  by  sinister  means  of  this  sort. 

“  We  have,  then,  if  I  have  classified  correctly, 
five  generically  differing  processes  by  which  all 
existing  capital  has  accumulated,  or  become  ag¬ 
gregated,  in  the  hands  of  its  present  possessors. 
Broadly  generalizing,  I  think  that  all  the  wealth 
or  capital  existing  (and  for  the  moment  we  may 
as  well  draw  no  distinction  between  wealth  and 
capital)  is  embraced  in  these  five  categories  : 

“  1.  Capital  which  is  the  residue  that  unwaste¬ 
ful  consumption  leaves  to  industrious  labor,  in  the 
hands  of  those  who  have  performed  the  labor. 
This  includes  the  surplus  earnings  of  all  usefully- 
applied  labor  ;  not  only  that  which  is  directly  pro¬ 
ductive,  but  that  which  the  actual  producers  need 
or  desire  to  have  performed  for  them.  It  includes, 
therefore,  the  labor  of  physicians,  surgeons,  law¬ 
yers,  clergymen,  artists,  literary  men,  and  the  like. 

“  2.  Capital  which  accrues  to  those  who  have 
the  faculty  to  organize  and  direct  with  efficiency 
the  productive  labor  of  others ;  or  the  faculty  to 
make  large,  economical  combinations  in  the  ex¬ 
changing  of  the  products  of  labor  between  different 
parts  of  the  world ;  or  the  ingenious  faculty  which 
improves  the  implements  and  processes  of  pro¬ 
ductive  industry ;  or  the  enterprising,  sagacious 


SECOND  EVENING. 


53 


faculty  tliat  conceives  and  carries  out  great  public 
works,  which,  result  in  wider  and  more  intimate 
relations  between  the  diverse  industries  of  the 

world. 

“  3.  Capital  that  is  gotten  into  possession  by 
what  we  call  speculation,  which  is  either  mere 
gambling  or  a  shrewd  catching  of  opportunities  in 
trade,  produced  very  often  by  public  calamities, 
or  by  disturbances  of  industry  and  commerce  that 
are  adverse  to  the  public  weal. 

“  4.  Capital  that  is  received  by  inheritance,  or 
otherwise  passively  acquired  by  its  possessors, 
without  any  agency,  or  a  very  small  agency,  of 
their  own,  in  the  acquisition  of  it. 

“  5.  Capital  that  is  acquired  by  actual,  unques¬ 
tionable  fraud. 

“Tfe  may  generalize  further,  perhaps,  and  re¬ 
duce  our  hve  categories  to  two,  dividing  all  wealth, 
and  therefore  all  capital,  into  two  parts,  separated 
by  one  most  essential  distinction  : 

“  1.  Capital  held  by  those  who  have  contrib¬ 
uted  more  or  less  to  the  creation  of  it. 

“  2.  Capital  held  by  those  who  have  contrib¬ 
uted  little  or  nothing  to  the  creation  of  it. 

“  Kow  is  it  consistent,  let  me  ask,  with  your 
notion  of  justice,  as  between  men,  that  capital, 
which  is  the  product  of  human  industry,  should 
be  held  in  possession  by  men  who  have  performed 
none  of  the  labor  that  produced  it,  nor  any  such 


54 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


labor  as  assists,  or  educates,  or  inspires,  or  grati¬ 
fies  the  wants  of  those  who  produced  it,  unless  it 
is  possessed  by  gift  ?  ” 

This  question  was  addressed  to  Master  John, 
who  promptly  answered  :  “  No,  sir,  it  is  not.  Jf 
strict  justice  were  to  prevail,  I  am  sure  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  possible  as  the  possessing  of 
wealth  or  capital  without  having  created  it,  un¬ 
less  it  had  been  conferred  by  gift,  or  by  some 
equitable  exchange  with  those  who  did  create  it. 
But  is  such  final  justice  possible?  ” 

“  Ah,  that  is  a  later  question,”  said  the  judge ; 
“  we  are  discussing  principles  now.  At  least  in  our 
accepted  beliefs  we  should  aim,  I  think,  to  sustain 
that  which  is  absolutely  right  and  true,  without  re¬ 
gard  to  what  may  or  may  not  seem  to  be  practicable 
for  the  moment.  You  do  not  dispute  the  propo¬ 
sition  that  capital  ought  in  strict  justice  to  belong, 
as  a  prevailing  rule  at  least,  to  those  who  have 
contributed  to  the  producing  of  it,  or  who  have 
contributed  in  some  way  to  the  satisfying  of  the 
wants  of  its  producers  ?  ” 

“  Xo ;  I  should  say  that  the  proposition  can¬ 
not  be  reasonably  disputed.” 

“  And  it  appears  to  be  the  fact,  does  it  not, 
that  a  very  large  part  of  the  wealth  or  capital  so 
far  accumulated  in  the  world  has  passed,  by  one 
means  and  another,  into  the  possession  of  men 
who  can  show  no  such  title  to  the  possession,  or 


SECOND  EVENING . 


55 


who  can  show  the  right  for  a  small  portion  only 
of  what  they  hold  ?  ” 

“  Yes.”  • 

“  Do  you  think  it  is  an  exaggeration  to  say 
that  one-third  of  all  the  wealth  now  existing  has 
been  gathered  into  the  hands  of  its  present  hold¬ 
ers  by  inheritance,  by  passive  accretion  of  value 
(relatively  or  excliangeably),  by  speculation,  by 
gambling,  and  by  various  kinds  of  fraud  ?  ” 

“  No  ;  I  am  afraid  that  more  than  that  pro¬ 
portion  of  the  whole,  rather  than  less,  would  be 
found,  on  a  strict  inquiry,  to  fall  within  your  cate¬ 
gories  of  questionably-acquired  capital.” 

“  Then,”  said  the  judge,  “  the  inequity  of  the 
distribution  of  wealth  is  surely  a  very  serious 
matter  ;  and  if  there  is  any  upward  movement  of 
development  in  humanity,  as  I,  for  one,  firmly 
believe,  then  there  must  be  a  discoverable  ten¬ 
dency  in  society  toward  the  correction  of  this  in¬ 
equity,  by  the  operation  of  social  forces  and  in¬ 
fluences  which  have  a  just  direction.  If  we  only 
investigate  as  political  economy  guides  us,  we 
shall  make  no  such  discovery,  because  the  politi¬ 
cal  economist  takes  account  of  no  motive  in  hu¬ 
man  action  except  self-interest  or  selfishness.  Sci¬ 
entifically  he  has  no  right  to  take  account  of  any 
other  motive,  because  his  business  is  simply  to  in¬ 
vestigate  correlatively  the  conditions  under  which 
the  exertions  of  men  are  applied  to  produce  the 


56 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


satisfaction  of  their  wants  and  desires,  and  lie  has 
gone  to  the  proper  limit  of  his  science  when  he 
has  formulated  into  laws*the  operation  of  this  one 
impulse,  from  self,  which  acts  in  all  human  in¬ 
dustry.  I  have  no  quarrel  to  make  with  political 
economy,  as  I  said  last  night.  I  only  contend 
that  there  is  a  larger  social  philosophy — an  ethi¬ 
cal  economy,  so  to  speak — which  embraces  politi¬ 
cal  economy  and  extends  far  outside  of  it,  and 
into  the  wider  domain  of  which  we  have  got  to 
carry  such  questions  as  this.  When  I  look  there, 
it  seems  to  me  that  I  can  see  a  gradual  evolution 
of  what  I  would  call  moral  intelligence  in  the 
civilized  world,  which  tends,  though  very  slowly, 
to  modify  the  great  impelling  force  of  selfishness 
in  all  directions,  and  even,  therefore,  in  the  acqui¬ 
sition  of  wealth.  It  is  certainly  a  very  slow  evo¬ 
lution,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  so  does  not  discour¬ 
age  my  faith. 

“  I  do  not  believe,  you  know,  in  ignorant 
morality.  Happily  for  the  world,  there  is,  often¬ 
times,  among  men,  without  the  least  rationality 
of  conscience,  a  certain  negative  rectitude  of  con¬ 
duct  which  bears  some  resemblance  to  virtue,  but 
which  is  not  of  the  true  quality  of  virtue  at  all. 
It  is  altogether  a  negative  thing.  It  is  right  con- 
duct  because  it  is  not  wrong  conduct,  that  is  all. 
It  may  come  of  feebleness,  it  may  come  of  simple¬ 
ness,  it  may  come  of  mere  dull,  plastic  obedience 


SECOND  EVENING. 


57 


to  some  guiding  religious  authority  ;  but  it  does 
not  come  of  any  vital  moral  force,  and  is  of  no 
account  whatever  in  an  estimate  of  the  moral  con¬ 
dition  of  mankind.  To  do  right  from  an  under¬ 
standing  of  right  is,  in  my  view,  the  only  genuine 
virtue. 

“  Truth  and  right  are  always  coincident  with 
pure  reason,  and  every  notion  of  right  and  wrong 
that  we  have,  as  I  conceive,  is  derived  from  the 
reasoning  intelligence,  which  God  gave  us  for  our 
enlightenment  in  this  way  as  in  all  other  ways.  But 
the  concepts  out  of  which  these  moral  notions  are 
logically  formed  come  from  outside  the  region  of 
sensual  discovery,  so  that  the  reason  is  not  helped 
by  the  senses  to  recognize  their  logical  relation¬ 
ships,  as  it  is  helped  in  the  whole  domain  of  sci¬ 
entific  knowledge.  It  necessarily  works,  there¬ 
fore,  toward  the  apprehension  of  moral  truth  with 
far  greater  slowness  and  difficulty  than  toward  the 
apprehension  of  that  which  is  sensibly  phenom¬ 
enal  ;  it  needs,  too,  a  far  longer  exercise  and  cult¬ 
ure  to  prepare  it  for  as  ready  and  clear  a  compre¬ 
hension  of  such  truth.  Who  can  wronder,  then, 
if  what  we  call  the  intellectual  development  of 
mankind  is  far  in  advance  of  its  moral  develop¬ 
ment  ?  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  The  neces¬ 
sary  difference  is  so  great  that  we  can  see  nothing 
proportionate  in  it ;  and  yet  there  is,  unquestion¬ 
ably,  a  certain  ratio,  always,  between,  for  example, 


58 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR 


the  scientific  knowledge  and  the  moral  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  human  race.  The  easier  objective 
work  of  the  human  reason  is  its  training  for  the 
harder  subjective  work  which  it  is  equally  ap¬ 
pointed  to  do,  and  the  evolution  of  moral  intelli¬ 
gence  by  the  latter  keeps  pace  with  the  evolution 
of  scientific,  artistic,  and  political  intelligence  by 
the  former,  though  lingeringly  and  far  behind. 
No  doubt  the  separation  is  an  increasing  one,  and 
that  fact  is  deceptive  to  us ;  but  it  is  like  the  race¬ 
running  of  the  tortoise  and  the  hare — the  distance 
between  them  augments  while  both  advance,  and 
even  though  there  may  be  some  constant  and  pro¬ 
portionate  acceleration  of  the  progress  of  both. 

“  There  is  this  order,  as  I  believe,  in  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  humanity  :  1.  Toward  objective  or  sen¬ 
suous  intelligence  ;  2.  Toward  subjective  or  moral 
intelligence ;  3.  Toward  the  disciplining  of  the 
animal  man  to  act  in  accord  with  his  intelligence. 
The  first  of  these  will  always  be  far  in  advance  of 
the  second ;  the  second  always  in  advance  of  the 
third  ;  and  yet  the  first  and  the  second  contribute 
steadily  to  the  last,  in  which  their  whole  divine 
purpose  would  seem  to  be  consummated. 

“  Our  faith  in  the  moral  progress  of  man  is  apt 
to  be  foolishly  discouraged  because  his  conduct 
continues  to  be  so  far  in  opposition  to  what  he 
does  apprehend  of  right  and  wrong.  Yet  there  is 
that  same  perversity  of  conduct,  opposed  to  knowl- 


SECOND  EVENING. 


59 


edge,  even  where  the  strongest  persuasions  of 
mere  animal  selfishness  cooperate  with  the  under¬ 
standing  to  restrain  it.  In  the  care  of  our  bodies, 
for  example,  we  act  just  as  far  in  contradiction  of 
what  we  know  of  the  facts  of  physiology,  of  hy¬ 
giene,  and  of  sanitary  science,  as  we  act  in  contra¬ 
vention  of  what  we  understand  to  he  right  and 
wrong  in  our  moral  relationships.  The  perversity 
of  conduct  signifies  no  more  in  one  case  than  in 
the  other.  In  every  case  it  only  signifies  the  im¬ 
perfect  training  of  the  animal  and  the  volitional 
parts  of  man  to  obey  the  reasoning  force  in  him, 
which  is  the  sovereign  force,  nevertheless,  and 
which  is  surely  destined,  in  the  Divine  plan,  to 
dominate  completely  at  last.  That  such  training 
goes  steadily  on,  however  slowly,  and  that  men 
do  act,  in  all  ways,  a  little  more  according  to  what 
they  know,  however  far  their  doing  may  still  fall 
behind  their  knowing,  I  am  not  able,  for  one,  to 
doubt.” 

“  But,”  I  interposed  at  this  point,  “  how  does 
your  theory  tally  with  the  facts  of  human  history  1 
Do  we  not  find  the  fundamental  Ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  as  well  developed  and  as  well  defined  in 
the  earlier  historic  stages  of  civilization  as  we  do 
now  \  ” 

“  Oh,  yes,”  replied  the  judge,  “  the  primitive, 
fundamental  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  are  among 
the  simplest,  and  therefore  among  the  earliest 


60 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


ideas  that  man  acquires.  Some  of  them  are  so 
simple  and  so  primitive  that  they  are  almost  like 
the  axioms  of  mathematical  science,  which  we  call 
self-evident  propositions,  because  they  contain  in 
the  very  statement  of  them  all  the  reasoning  that 
enters  into  their  construction.  The  difficulty  to 
the  human  intelligence  is  not  in  laying  hold  of 
these  first  principles  of  right,  hut  in  combining 
and  in  applying  them,  as  rules  of  conduct,  under 
varying  circumstances  and  conditions,  and  in  va¬ 
rying  situations,  to  varying  human  relationships. 
AVhile  it  easily  learns  to  shift  its  application  of 
fundamental  laws  in  science,  or  art,  or  politics,  it 
is  readily  confused  and  perpetually  loses  its  bear¬ 
ings,  so  to  speak,  in  carrying  a  moral  truth  from 
one  group  of  relationships  to  another.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  all  the  subjective  movements  of 
the  human  intellect — in  all  ratiocinative  operations 
where  it  passes  outside  of  tangible  things,  and 
away  from  the  cooperation  of  the  serviceable  senses 
of  the  human  body.  I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of 
the  average  human  mind,  as  represented  by  the 
mass  of  men  and  women,  and  I  do  not  take  ac¬ 
count  of  the  exceptional  few  who  are  given  to  be 
tutors  of  the  many.  Take  an  example  from  our 
present  topic :  the  simple  idea  of  the  right  of 
property  is  one  of  the  fundamental  ideas  of  right, 
and  constructed  very  simply,  out  of  little  more 
than  the  ego  and  non-ego,  or  self-consciousness  for 


SECOND  EVENING. 


G1 


its  first  element  and  tlie  cognition  of  another  self 
for  its  second.  I  have  no  doubt  tliat  tlie  moral 
law,  ‘  Thou  shalt  not  steal,’  was  apprehended  by 
the  more  advanced  tribes  of  men  long  before  its 
deliverance  on  Mount  Sinai.  But  those  who  could 
see  it  to  be  a  law  of  right  conduct  between  them¬ 
selves  and  their  familiar  neighbors,  whom  they 
were  habituated  to  look  upon  as  fellow-men,  fellow- 
citizens,  fellow-members,  that  is,  of  their  own 
tribe  and  nation,  could  not  carry  it  to  its  univer¬ 
sal  application  without  becoming  confused  and 
lost.  Consequently,  in  the  very  community  where 
theft,  or  the  seizure  of  another’s  goods,  had  be¬ 
come  a  recognized  wrong,  as  between  its  own 
members,  we  continually  find  piracy  and  predatory 
warfare  upon  alien  or  separated  communities  to  be 
fully  approved  and  never  thought  of  as  conduct 
possessing  the  same  wrongful  nature.  Tlie  simple 
explanation  of  this  repeated  anomaly  in  human 
history — an  anomaly  which  is  still  repeated,  to  no 
small  extent,  even  within  our  civilized  regions — is, 
that  the  moral  intelligence  of  the  average  man  re¬ 
quires  long  culture  before  it  is  able  to  give  univer¬ 
sal  application  even  to  the  oldest  maxims  of  right, 
and  is  not  confused  and  betrayed  by  habitual  no¬ 
tions  of  nationality,  or  race,  or  sect,  or  class,  or  by 
the  simplest  variations  of  circumstance.  If  you 
were  to  contrive  to-day  some  ingenious  new  way 
of  gaining  possession  of  the  property  of  another 


G2 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


without  the  owner's  consent,  society  at  large  would 
be  a  long  time,  I  venture  to  say,  in  getting  it  cat¬ 
alogued  in  the  list  of  recognized  dishonesties.  To 
the  majority  of  men,  a  variation  from  the  simplest 
form  of  stealing  does  actually  disguise  or  obscure 
the  fact  that  it  is  stealing.  The  same  slow  awk¬ 
wardness  appears  in  the  handling  of  every  other 
moral  truth  by  the  average  human  intellect,  no 
matter  how  fully  acquired  the  truth  may  be  in  its 
primitive  nakedness.  When  you  take  this  human 
intelligence  of  ours  away  from  the  region  of  sen¬ 
sible  objects,  where  it  can  measure  and  mark  its 
bearings,  by  visual  reference  to  every-day  objects 
and  every-day  phenomena,  as  the  surveyor  does 
when  he  is  running  a  right  line,  it  is  easily  led 
astray  ;  and  I  do  not  wonder  when  I  find  it  so.  It 
is  quite  according  to  Nature,  I  think,  that  the  hu¬ 
man  reason  should  need  much  culture  before  it  can 
deal  with  subjective  ideas  as  easily  as  it  deals  with 
objective  ideas,  and  therefore  I  expect  the  objec¬ 
tive  advancement  of  the  intelligence  of  mankind 
to  be  far  in  advance  of  its  subjective  or  moral  de¬ 
velopment,  while  I  am  very  sure,  nevertheless,  that 
the  one  is  everlastingly  a  contribution  to  the  other. 

“  But  very  likely  you  do  not  see  what  bearing 
all  this  moral  philosophy  has  on  our  present  ques¬ 
tion  ?  ” 

I  admitted  that  I  did  not  see  the  bearing  ex- 
actlv. 

V 


SECOND  EVENING. 


63 


“  Well,”  said  tlie  judge,  “  I  have-  gone  into  it 
a  little  because  this  doctrine  of  morals  is  at  the 
bottom  of  my  whole  social  philosophy.  It  is  the 
justification  I  have  to  offer  for  my  faith  in  an  ul¬ 
timate  determination  of  equity  between  the  capi¬ 
talist  and  the  laborer,  which  political  economy 
does  not  promise ;  and  also  because  it  is  necessa¬ 
rily  preliminary  to  two  or  three  questions  that  I 
wish  to  ask  before  we  drop  our  subject  to-night. 
I  wish  to  ask  you  if  you  think  that  downright, 
direct  robbery  is  as  rife  in  this  generation  as  it  was 
last  century,  within  what  we  call  the  civilized  com¬ 
munities  ?  In  other  words,  if  professional  rob¬ 
bers,  such  as  highwaymen,  brigands,  pirates,  burg¬ 
lars,  etc.,  who  plunder  their  fellow-men  without 
any  disguise,  are  as  numerous  as  they  were  ?  ” 

After  a  little  consideration  we  all  said,  “  No.” 

“  Some  progress  has  been  made,  then,”  said 
the  judge,  “  in  diminishing  theft  of  the  undis¬ 
guised  sort,  at  least.  Now,  what  has  been  the 
agent?  Do  you  think  that  law  lias  done  it,  by 
increased  vigor  and  efficiency  ?  You  must  re¬ 
member  that  the  law  was  terribly  merciless  a  hun¬ 
dred  years  ago  in  its  dealing  with  these  crimes 
against  property  ;  terribly  merciless  and  savagely 
vigilant.  It  hanged  men  and  women  for  trivial 
thefts,  and  kept  its  executioners  busy.  Since  our 
century  began,  the  tendency  of  the  law  has  been 
all  the  time  toward  a  milder  spirit,  with  not  much 


64 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


increase,  that  I  can  see,  in  the  energy  of  its  po¬ 
lice.  It  is  true  that  gas-lighting  and  newspapers 
and  the  telegraph  have  multiplied  the  eyes,  ears, 
and  amis  of  the  law  to  a  wonderful  extent ;  but 
still,  when  all  reasonable  credit  is  given  to  these 
modern  agencies  in  the  police  system  of  society, 
do  you  think  that  the  great  diminution  which  has 
taken  place  in  common  theft  and  violent  robbery 
can  he  attributed  altogether  to  an  augmentation 
of  force  in  government  and  law  2  ” 

“No,”  said  I,  “unless  the  law  gains  in  effi¬ 
ciency  by  the  lessening  of  its  rigor.” 

“  But  that  cannot  he,  my  dear  sir,  unless  there 
is  some  other  restraining  force  in  cooperation  with 
the  law,  which  the  law  gives  room  to,  by  a  vrise 
retirement  of  its  own  energies.  Now,  that  is 
just  the  point  I  was  coming  to.  There  is  such  a 
morally  restraining  force,  which  slowly  evolves 
itself  in  society,  and  which,  as  it  is  generated,  be¬ 
comes  more  powerful  than  lawT.  It  is  public  sen¬ 
timent,  as  we  call  it,  or  the  prevailing  enlighten¬ 
ment  of  a  given  community  at  a  given  time,  with 
reference  to  the  applications  of  a  given  principle 
of  right.  This  moral  intelligence,  first  gathering 
into  forcefulness  among  the  few,  percolates  down¬ 
ward  writh  sure  slowness  into  the  duller  mass, 
and  works  a  gradual  change  in  the  general  dispo¬ 
sition  of  society  toward  particular  forms  of  wrong¬ 
doing.  AVithin  the  past  century  it  has  operated  to 


SECOND  EVENING. 


65 


render  all  kinds  of  simple  stealing  and  violent 
robbery  more  disgraceful  than  they  used  to  be ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  has  placed  the  human  mind,  in 
civilized  countries,  more  generally  in  an  attitude 
of  contempt  toward  them  ;  and  the  contempt  of 
mankind  is  more  terrible  to  the  average  human 
being  than  scaffolds  or  prisons  are.  A  certain  ad¬ 
miration  of  heroism  used  to  be  conceded,  not 
more  than  a  generation  ago,  to  the  boldness  of  the 
footpad  and  the  daring  of  the  burglar — to  the 
Jack  Sheppards,  the  Dick  Turpins,  and  the  Mor- 
rills  of  that  time — which  all  the  audacity  of  the 
‘  James  Brothers’  and  the  c  Younger  Brothers’ 
and  their  sort  in  our  day  cannot  inspire.  The  ro¬ 
mance  of  these  crimes  is  utterly  gone.  The  com¬ 
mon  moral  intelligence  of  mankind  has  been  de¬ 
veloped  far  enough  to  recognize  the  despicable 
villainy  of  a  thief  and  robber,  no  matter  what 
qualities  of  courage  or  coolness,  dexterity,  inven¬ 
tion,  or  enterprise,  may  surround  and  color  it. 
Toward  all  modes  of  outright  theft  and  robbery 
the  public  sentiment  of  society  has  become  con¬ 
demnatory  and  contemptuous,  as  it  never  was 
before  ;  and  that,  more  than  all  other  reasons,  ac¬ 
counts  to  me  for  the  diminished  prevalence  and 
audacity  of  these  crimes. 

“  In  the  same  way,  ordinary  gambling,  which 
was  the  fashion  of  society  a  hundred  years  ago, 
and  not  merely  tolerated  but  approved,  has  now 


66 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


become  disreputable,  and  is  driven,  for  the  most 
part,  into  shame-faced  hiding.  So,  too,  lias  duel¬ 
ing  been  suppressed,  in  all  the  better  civilized 
countries,  not  by  law,  but  by  public  sentiment,  or 
by  what  I  call  a  moral  intelligence,  which  lias  be¬ 
come  so  far  advanced  that  no  sham  code  of  honor, 
or  pride  of  physical  courage,  and  no  specious  dif¬ 
ferences  of  manner  and  circumstance  in  the  deed, 
can  blind  it  any  longer  to  the  murder  that  is  done 
when  one  human  being  kills  another  with  deliber¬ 
ation  and  intent. 

“  These  facts,  and  many  more  of  the  same 
kind  which  I  might  adduce,  are  very  significant  to 
me.  They  teach  us,  I  think,  in  what  way* to  look 
for  the  moral  improvement  of  society  and  what  to 
expect  as  an  evolution  of  justice  and  right.  They 
teach  me  to  believe  that  there  is  being  developed, 
in  the  common  crowd  of  human  beings,  a  better 
state  of  moral  intelligence,  which  slowly  tends  to 
the  detection  of  theft  in  all  its  disguises,  one  by 
one,  and  which  shall  brand  in  time  the  man  who 
steals  his  neighbor’s  goods  by  cheating  in  trade,  or 
by  overreaching,  or  chicanery,  or  fraud,  or  by  dis¬ 
honest  cunning  of  any  kind,  as  much  as  the  man 
who  steals  by  picking  a  pocket  or  picking  a  lock  ; 
and  which  shall  pronounce,  too,  against  gambling 
with  stocks  or  with  commodities  of  the  market  as 
strongly  as  against  gambling  with  dice  and  cards. 
But,  if  the  gradual  clearing  of  this  moral  intelli- 


SECOND  EVENING. 


07 


gence  tends  that  way,  toward  the  recognizing 
and  enforcing  of  rules  of  honesty  in  the  conduct 
of  men,  it  tends  still  more  obviously,  I  think, 
toward  the  recognition  and  enforcement  of  rules 
of  justice  between  them.  For  it  is  plain  to  me 
that  the  generalizing  of  such  laws  of  justice  as  do 
not  concern  property  alone  has  made  greater  prog¬ 
ress  of  late  than  the  generalizing  of  the  law  of 
honesty,  or  of  property-rights,  although  it  is  the 
greater  generalization  of  the  two,  and  really  com¬ 
prehends  the  other,  because  honesty  is  but  one 
particular  of  justice,  and  nothing  more.  With 
reference,  therefore,  to  all  the  modes  in  which 
wealth'  becomes  partitioned  among  men,  I  firm¬ 
ly  believe  that  we  are  tending,  in  a  slow,  sure 
way,  toward  equity,  though  not,  as  we  must  care¬ 
fully  remember,  toward  equality.” 

“  You  are  right,  judge,”  cried  I ;  “  you  are 
right.  I  am  convinced  that  your  hopeful  doctrine 
of  justice  is  founded  well,  in  reason  and  upon  fact, 
although  the  forces  to  which  you  intrust  your  faith 
act  so  feebly  and  so  slowly  that  one  needs  a  pro¬ 
found  philosophy  to  keep  fast  his  faithfulness  to 
them.  I  am  only  impatient  now  to  learn  how, 
and  with  what  clearness,  you  see  a  way  for  the 
working  of  these  just  forces  through  the  prodigious 
difficulties  that  environ  them.” 

“We  have  not  come  to  the  difficulties  yet,” 
said  the  judge.  “We  must  determine  first  what 


68 


TALES  ABOUT  LABOR. 


ought  to  be  tlie  adjustment  made  between  capital 
and  labor,  or  wliat  would  be  if  the  terms  of  their 
copartnership  in  production  were  settled  on  pure 
principles  of  justice  and  right.  Then  will  be  the 
time  to  consider  such  obstacles  as  our  doctrine  of 
justice  may  have  to  encounter  in  the  way  of  its 
realization.  A\re  cannot  reach  that  point  to-night, 
for  it  is  late  already,  and  we  had  better  adjourn 
the  discussion  to  another  evening.” 

“  Let  it  be  soon,”  exclaimed  my  wife,  “  for  I 
want  to  know  the  difficulties.  I  feel  eager  for  the 
prevailing  of  this  doctrine  of  justice,  and  am 
anxious  to  know  how  long  the  world  may  have 
to  wait  for  it.” 

“  It  shall  be  an  early  evening,  then,”  the  judge 
replied,  as  he  rose,  and  we  fixed  our  time  before 
he  took  his  leave. 


THIRD  EVENING-. 


ABOUT  THE  COMPETITION  OF  FACULTIES  AMONG-  MEN. 


The  Comparative  Quality  of  “  Business  ”  Faculties,  and  the  Ex¬ 
cessive  Premium  put  upon  them. — The  Judge’s  Cooperative 
Theory.  —  Trades-Unions  and  Labor-Strikes.  —  The  Preach¬ 
ing  and  Teaching  that  need  to  go  together. 


“  Now,  judge,”  said  I,  when  we  had  reassem¬ 
bled,  on  the  third  evening,  and  after  we  had  ex¬ 
changed  a  bit  or  two  of  gossip,  by  way  of  relish, 
“  I  shall  assume  to  be  the  presiding  officer  of  this 
august  assemblage,  and  call  to  order.  We  will 
take  up  the  unfinished  business  of  our  last  sitting, 
and  the  question,  I  believe,  is  on  the  motion  of 
the  gentleman  from  the  iron  district,  that  we  de¬ 
clare  those  advantages  which  the  man  of  capital 
holds  over  the  man  without  capital  to  be  rights 
which  belong  to  him,  and  which  he  may  fully  ex¬ 
ercise  as  it  pleaseth  him  to  do.  Are  you  ready 
for  the  question  1  ” 

“  But,”  interposed  John,  “if  I  may  be  permit¬ 
ted  to  correct  the  speaker,  I  think  it  will  be  re¬ 
membered  that  I  withdrew  that  motion,  as  you 


70 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


see  fit  to  call  it,  after  listening  to  tlie  argument  of 
the  distinguished  gentleman  on  my  right.” 

“  Xever  mind,”  said  the  judge,  “  I  shall  he 
glad  to  have  the  question  considered  as  being  still 
before  the  house,  because  there  are  some  things 
more  to  be  noticed  before  we  dismiss  it.  I  do 
like,  however,  in  a  discussion  such  as  this,  to  be 
sure  that  we  are  keeping  step  with  each  other,  and 
that  we  understand  one  another  at  every  point  in 
our  discourse.  I  propose,  therefore,  that  we  just 
glance  back  for  a  moment,  over  the  ground  we 
have  traversed,  and  see  whether  we  entirely  agree 
in  our  conclusions.” 

We  showed  our  assent,  and  the  judge  went  on : 

“  In  order  to  be  exact,  I  have  written  a  little 
series  of  propositions,  which  are  the  summing  up, 
in  my  view,  of  the  conclusions  established  in  our 
talk  thus  far.  They  are  these  : 

“  1.  Xo  productive  work  of  any  kind  can  now 
be  done,  in  most  parts  of  the  world,  without  the 
help  of  capital. 

“  2.  The  men  who  have  acquired  no  capital 
are  compelled  to  solicit  that  help  by  the  most  in¬ 
exorable  of  all  human  necessities — the  necessity 
for  bread,  clothing,  and  shelter ;  while  the  men 
who  have  acquired  capital  are  impelled  on  their 
part  to  yield  it  by  nothing  more  strenuous,  so 
far  as  circumstances  go,  than  a  selfish  motive — 
the  desire  for  gain. 


THIRD  EVENING. 


n 


u  3.  The  relationship  between  -these  two 
classes,  therefore,  if  nothing  intervenes,  is  one  of 
independence  on  the  side  of  capital  and  of  de¬ 
pendence  on  the  side  of  labor,  so  that  the  former 
possesses,  to  an  appalling  degree,  the  power  to 
deal  oppressively  with  the  latter. 

“  4.  In  the  view  to  which  political  economy  is 
restricted,  no  intervention  can  be  recognized ;  and, 
consequently,  although  this  oppressive  power  that 
attaches  to  the  possession  of  capital  is  seldom  ex¬ 
ercised  to  its  possible  extreme,  yet  our  prevailing 
social  doctrines,  being  narrowed  to  the  limitations 
of  political  economy,  give  a  theoretical  sanction 
to  the  extremest  exercise  of  that  power. 

“  5.  But  there  is  nevertheless  an  intervention 
that  must  be  acknowledged,  proceeding  out  of  the 
moral  intelligence  of  society,  which  develops  rules 
of  just  conduct  in  the  place  of  rules  of  conduct 
that  are  purely  selfish. 

“  6.  This  moral  intelligence  has  now  attained 
culture  enough  to  produce  a  common  notion  of 
justice,  in  the  face  of  which  might  can  no  longer 
be  claimed  to  make  right,  no  matter  in  what  attri¬ 
butes  the  endowment  of  might  may  be  conferred. 

“7.  Hence,  even  though  the  possessors  of 
wealth  had  acquired  it  as  a  consequence  of 
capabilities  in  which  they  are  superior  to  their 
fellows  who  acquire  no  wealth,  still  the  vast  ad¬ 
vantage  which  that  acquisition  throws  into  their 


72 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


hands  cannot  be  recognized  as  belonging  to  them 
with  absoluteness  and  by  right,  to  be  exercised  at 
will,  and  under  the  dictation  of  their  self-interest 
alone. 

“  8.  But  a  large  part  of  the  wealth  and  cap¬ 
ital  of  the  world  is  gathered  into  the  hands  of 
its  possessors  either  by  no  active  exertion  of  any 
kind  on  their  own  part,  or  by  methods  of  acquisi¬ 
tion  which  are  sometimes  pure  robbery  and  some¬ 
times  removed  only  a  step  or  two  from  it ;  and, 
for  all  this  large  part,  even  that  claim  of  right  to 
the  advantage  which  capital  holds  over  dependent 
labor  cannot  reasonably  be  set  up. 

“  9.  On  the  whole,  therefore,  we  may  safely 
conclude  it  to  be  not  in  accordance  with  true  prin¬ 
ciples  of  justice  and  right,  that  the  terms  of  co¬ 
partnership  in  production,  between  the  capitalist 
and  the  laborer,  should  be  left  wholly  for  settle¬ 
ment  to  a  compromise  between  the  self-interest  of 
the  former  and  the  inexorable  necessities  of  the 
latter. 

“Do  you  accept  this,”  said  the  judge,  when  he 
had  finished  reading,  “  as  a  fair  summing  up  of 
our  talk,  and  are  we  agreed  thus  far  in  our  conclu¬ 
sions  ?  ” 

“  I  accept  and  assent,”  said  I,  and  so  said  all 
the  company. 

“  Well,  then,”  continued  the  judge,  “  we  will 
proceed.  We  have  determined,  somewhat  to  our 


THIRD  EVENING. 


73 


satisfaction,  that  the  capitalist  may  not  'rightfully 

exact  from  the  laborer  all  that  he  has  power  to 

* 

exact,  when  the  joint  product  of  capital  and  labor 
is  divided  between  them ;  and  noiv,  of  course,  we 
shall  have  to  determine,  as  nearly  as  we  can,  how 
much  he  may  demand,  with  justice,  for  himself. 

“  But,  first,  I  wish  to  consider  with  you  a  little 
further,  and  just  for  a  moment,  the  question  of 
rights  between  that  wealth  which  is  actually  ac¬ 
quired  by  superior  capability,  and  that  poverty 
which  is  the  consequence  of  a  want  of  capability. 
It  is  very  hard  for  the  human  mind,  self-environed 
as  it  is,  to  give  up  the  primitive  idea  that  a  man  is 
entitled  to  all  the  benefits  of  every  advantage  that 
he  can  get  from  better  faculties  than  his  neighbors 
have.  We  cannot,  therefore,  reach  too  much  dis¬ 
tinctness  on  this  point. 

“  How,  the  faculties  which  contribute  to  suc¬ 
cess  in  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  by  justifiable 
methods,  are  widely  diversified  faculties  ;  but,  gen¬ 
erally  speaking,  how  would  you  rank  them  among 
the  faculties  of  the  human  bein^  ?  Looking  around 
among  the  men  of  your  acquaintance  who  are 
called  i  successful  men,’  and  who  have  acquired 
fortune  or  pecuniary  independence  by  strictly  un¬ 
exceptionable  means,  as  we  estimate  in  these  mat¬ 
ters,  what  should  you  say  of  the  faculties  to  which 
their  acquisition  of  wealth  has  been  due  %  Are 
they  of  a  highly  superior  kind,  as  compared  with 
4 


74 


TALKS  ABOUT  LAB  OK 


other  human  faculties  which  do  not  enter  into 
money-making  ?  ” 

44  Ko,”  replied  I,  44  I  have  often  thought  of  that. 
The  men  who  bring  to  bear  in  4  business/  of  pro¬ 
duction  or  exchange,  any  really  superior  intellect¬ 
ual  force,  seem  to  be  few  —  I  mean  compara¬ 
tively  few.  There  is  hardly  any  other  object  of 
human  exertion  that  does  not  call  out  higher 
capabilities.  I  think  it  is  rather  seldom — though 
it  sometimes  happens  —  that  a  man  who  has 
capabilities  of  the  higher  order  can  concentrate 
them  on  this  object  of  money-getting.  Their 
focus  is  not  easily  adjusted  to  it.  But  it  is 
the  concentration  of  a  man’s  forces  that  tells,  in 
everything ;  and  that  man,  therefore,  whose  ener¬ 
gies  are  of  such  a  disposition  that  they  will  bend 
themselves,  freely  and  fully  to  this  object,  is  the 
successful  man  in  acquiring  wealth,  even  though 
the  faculties  thus  compacted  may  be  inferior  to 
the  faculties  of  his  unsuccessful  neighbor.  As  a 
rule,  I  should  say — with  many  exceptions,  how¬ 
ever — the  money-making  faculties  and  qualities 
are  quite  of  a  narrow  kind,  with  very  frequent 
littleness  and  ignobility ;  but  the  energy  in  them 
and  the  activity  behind  them  are  usually  intense. 
The  character  of  man  compounded  in  this  way  is 
an  exceedingly  useful  one,  but  not  in  the  highest 
degree  an  admirable  one.” 

44  Very  true,”  returned  the  judge,  44  and  hence 


THIRD  EVENING. 


\ 


75 

we  see  tliat  the  capable  powers  among.men  which 
win,  in  the  one  great  struggle  that  pits  them  all 
against  each  other — the  struggle,  that  is,  to  eman¬ 
cipate  themselves  from  daily  servitude  to  their 
bodily  wants — are  not  necessarily,  nor  as  a  rule, 
the  higher  faculties  of  man,  nor  those  that  would 
seem  most  deserving.  On  the  other  hand,  a  want 
of  capability  in  the  acquisition  of  wealth  is  plainly 
no  proof  of  an  inferior  man,  nor  of  a  man  whose 
contributions  to  society  are  of  little  worth.  The 
inventors,  the  scientific  discoverers,  the  originators 
of  new  methods  and  new  ideas,  the  path-finders  of 
commerce,  the  philosophers,  the  poets,  the  men  of 
learning,  of  literature  and  of  art — all  the  pioneers 
and  guides  of  human  progress,  in  a  word,  are  well- 
nigh  invariably  men  who  cannot  or  do  not  get  a 
fair  share  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  in  return  for 
their  services  to  it.  It  is  almost  a  law,  in  fact,  that 
no  man  can  possess  and  exercise  any  faculty  of 
general  value  to  mankind  without  being  rendered 
nearly  impotent  so  far  as  the  gathering  of  wealth 
to  himself  is  concerned.  I  will  venture  further, 
and  say  that  it  is  a  law,  with  not  many  exceptions  ; 
it  holds  good,  yon  will  find,  from  top  to  bottom 
in  the  whole  range  of  diversified  human  capabili¬ 
ties.  A  man  cannot  be  a  good  artisan  or  mechanic, 
in  any  kind  of  hand-labor  which  makes  the  least 
demand  upon  intelligent  faculties,  without  concen¬ 
trating  so  much  of  all  his  powers  upon  the  imme- 


76 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


•diate  object  of  his  labor,  that  he  is  compelled  to 
trust  its  ultimate  results,  so  far  as  his  own  benefit 
is  concerned,  to  other  agencies.  If  he  is  to  be  a 
good  workman,  he  can  withhold  from  his  work 
neither  time  enough,  nor  thought  enough,  nor  will 
enough,  to  make  combinations  of  trade,  or  to  con¬ 
duct  speculations,  or  to  organize  the  conjoining 
of  his  own  labor  with  the  labor  of  others.  All  this 
he  must  trust  those  whose  business  it  is,  to  do  for 
him.  For  his  own  part,  he  can  only  do  good  work, 
of  the  kind  he  has  chosen  to  do,  and  deliver  it  in 
commission,  as  I  may  say,  to  such  industrial  and 
commercial  system  as  prevails,  taking  whatever 
return  that  system  may  render  to  him.  If  this 
man  tries  to  4  make  money  ’  in  any  other  way  than 
by  industriously  doing  good  work,  of  such  kind  as 
he  is  best  fitted  to  do,  it  must  be  at  the  expense  of 
his  proper  work,  and  a  certain  loss  to  the  world  of 
true,  efficient,  productive  workmanship  ensues. 

“  Do  you  not  see,  therefore,  that  an  industrial 
system  which  puts  a  great  premium  on  the  exercise 
of  those  special  but  not  eminent  faculties  that  are 
employed  in  what  we  describe  by  the  general  term 
4  business,’  is  an  economically  vicious  system,  as 
well  as  an  unjust  one  ?  In  our  use  of  the  word 
4  business,’  we  mean  by  it — 1.  The  organizing,  or 
the  effectively  putting  together,  of  the  labor  of 
different  persons,  as  in  manufactories  or  in  trans¬ 
portation  ;  2.  Trade,  or  the  conducting  of  ex- 


THIRD  EVENING . 


77 


changes  between  different  producers,  and  between* 
producers  and  non-producing  consumers  ;  3.  Fi¬ 
nancial  business,  monetary  dealings,  the  manipu¬ 
lating  of  that  movable,  current  capital  which  is 
the  life-blood  of  industry  and  commerce.  Now, 
the  faculties  that  are  employed  in  these  ways  do  so 
monopolize,  under  present  conditions,  the  acquisi¬ 
tion  and  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  that  it  is  well- 
nigh  impossible  for  men  to  extort  more  than  a  de¬ 
cent  living  by  the  employment  of  other  faculties, 
in  all  the  other  greater  fields  of  human  industry, 
intelligence,  and  energy.  Do  you  not  see  what  a 
profoundly  distracting  and  depressing  influence 
this  exerts  upon  those  purely  productive  faculties 
which  these  4  business  ’  faculties,  as  we  will  call 
them,  ought  to  be  in  cordial  and  helpful  cooper¬ 
ation  with  ?  Do  you  not  see  that  the  men  who 
could  best  be  mechanics,  inventors,  designers,  and 
so  on,  are  under  a  perpetual  temptation  to  try  to 
be  merchants,  tradesmen,  managers  of  business, 
speculators,  and  the  like ;  while  men  who  do  be¬ 
come  artisans  and  mechanics,  in  a  fit  calling,  are 
perpetually  drawn  away  from  a  fervent  concentra¬ 
tion  of  themselves  upon  their  work  by  dreams  of 
easier  fortune,  and  the  contriving  of  plans  for  mak¬ 
ing  more  gain  in  other  ways?  ” 

“  I  do,  indeed,”  said  I ;  “  we  can,  none  of  us, 
help  seeing  the  effect,  for  it  is  becoming  more 
conspicuous  every  day ;  and  it  is  cried  out  against 


78 


TALKS  ABOUT  LAB  OB. 


every  day  without  being  rightly  understood.  The 
young  men  of  successive  generations  seem  to  be¬ 
come  more  reluctant  to  commit  themselves  to 
mechanical  callings  in  life,  or  to  directly  productive 
labor  of  any  kind,  and  prefer  to  scramble,  in 
crowds  which  grow  greater  every  year,  for  clerk¬ 
ships,  for  footholds  and  places  of  the  poorest  sort 
in  the  ‘  business  ’-world.  It  is  the  universal  com¬ 
plaint,  too,  that  mechanic  workmanship  of  every 
kind  is  deteriorating  in  its  quality.  It  certainly 
is  difficult,  nowadays,  to  get  good  and  thorough 
work  done  in  any  department  of  manual  industry.” 

“  To  be  sure,”  said  the  judge,  “and  I  am  con¬ 
vinced  that  the  desertion  and  deterioration  of 
mechanical  industries  will  continue  to  be  an  in¬ 
creasing  evil  until  we  have  begun,  in  some  way, 
to  cut  down  the  excessive  premium  which  our 
present  adjustment  of  relationships  between  capital 
and  labor  puts  upon  those  faculties  and  energies 
that  enter  into  what  we  distinguish  from  other 
labor  by  calling  it  ‘business.’  The  crowds  will 
swarm,  of  course,  where  the  prizes  are  distributed. 
So  long  as  the  substantial  rewards  of  exertion  are 
seen  to  be  displayed,  almost  entirely,  in  the  mar¬ 
ket-booths  and  in  the  counting-houses,  in  the 
office  and  at  the  desk,  instead  of  in  the  shop  and 
at  the  work-bench,  you  may  be  sure  that  the  office 
and  the  counting-house,  the  store  and  the  bank, 
will  be  mobbed  with  young  applicants;  and  you 


THIRD  EVENING. 


79 


may  be  sure,  too,  that  there  will  be  a  lowering  of 
ambition  and  a  lessening  of  spirit  in  the  work 
which  is  done  at  the  bench,  at  the  anvil,  and  in 
the  factory.  It  cannot  be  otherwise.  All  the  in¬ 
ti  nences  that  act  upon  labor,  under  present  con¬ 
ditions,  seem  to  me  to  be  profoundly  depressing  on 
the  mechanics  and  the  operatives. 

“  There  is  evidently  bad  economy,  as  well  as 
injustice,  in  the  industrial  system  which  has  this 
outcome.  Society  cannot  afford  to  continue  giving 
such  excessive  encouragement  to  one  set  of  human 
faculties  as  against  all  the  others  which  united¬ 
ly  contribute  to  its  material  progress.  Sooner  or 
later  it  must  contrive  in  some  way  to  make  those 
several  faculties  which  produce,  on  one  side,  the 
skillful,  ingenious  mechanic,  the  adept  artisan,  the 
capable  clerk,  the  efficient  laborer  of  any  plodding 
sort,  and  which  produce,  on  the  other  side,  the 
organizer,  the  merchant,  the  financier,  the  c  man 
of  business  5 — it  must  contrive  in  some  way,  I  say, 
to  make  these  several  faculties  serve  one  another 
on  fairer  terms ;  to  mah,e  them  serve  one  another 
on  terms  more  nearly  proportioned  to  the  value  of 
what  they  severally  contribute  to  the  product  of 
the  whole.” 

“  Yes,”  said  I ;  “  but  how  ?  ” 

“  Ay,  there’s  the  rub,”  replied  the  judge. 
“  On  principle  it  is  easy  to  tell  how,  in  general 
terms.  In  practice  it  is  not  so  easy.  I  trust  the 


80 


TALKS  ABOUT  LAB  OB. 


growing  sense  of  justice  among  men  to  slowly 
work  tlie  problem  out.  There  is  only  one  course 
which  the  movement  toward  justice  in  this  matter 
can  take,  and  that  is  in  the  direction  of  estab¬ 
lishing  a  relation  of  partnership  between  the  or¬ 
ganizers  of  labor  on  one  hand  and  the  laborers  on 
the  other,  to  supplant  the  rude  relationship  in 
which  they  now  stand  toward  each  other  as  ‘  em¬ 
ployers  ’  and  ‘employes.’  Employers  and  em¬ 
ployes  !  These  very  terms  are  significant  of  the 
arbitrariness  of  the  system  which  they  represent. 
In  the  fair  sense  of  that  word,  the  mechanic  in  a 
shop,  or  the  so-called  operative  in  a  factory,  may 
just  as  truly  be  said  to  ‘  employ’  the  capitalist-pro¬ 
prietor  of  the  factory  or  the  shop  to  organize  the 
effective  combination  of  his  special  work  with  the 
work  of  his  fellows,  and  to  make  the  exchange  of 
products  for  him,  as  the  proprietor  may  be  said  to 
employ  him  to  do  the  special  work  which  he  does. 
The  difference  between  them  in  the  matter  of  em¬ 
ploying  each  other’s  services  is  just  that  which 
grows  out  of  a  state  of  dependence  on  one  side 
and  of  independence  on  the  other  side,  whereby 
all  the  reciprocity  of  interest  under  which  these 
two  men,  with  their  differing  faculties,  ought  to 
be  brought  to  act  together,  and  to  serve  and  assist 
one  another  in  the  great  undertakings  of  human 
labor,  is  extinguished.  One  becomes  actually  the 
‘  employer,’  and  one  the  ‘  employed,’  instead  of 


THIRD  EVENING. 


81 


each  being  the  employer  of  the  capabilities  of  the 
other  on  fairly-adjusted  terms.  One  receives  his 
daily  rate  of  wages,  fixed  for  the  most  part  by  the 
average  state  of  need  in  his  class ;  the  other  makes 
what  he  can  out  of  the  bargain,  and  drives  it  hard 
to  make  the  utmost.  It  is  very  plain  to  me  that 
no  equity  in  the  partitioning  of  the  products  of 
human  industry  can  be  had  under  the  wages  system 
that  we  now  maintain  ;  under  the  system,  that  is, 
which  gives  a  fixed  compensation  to  one  side,  while 
profits,  indefinite,  unshared  and  unaccounted  for, 
go  wholly  to  the  other.” 

“  What,  then,”  I  asked,  “  can  take  the  place 
of  the  ‘  wages  system  ?  ’  Do  you  look  to  the  (  co¬ 
operative  system  5  for  your  remedy  ?  ” 

“Ho,  I  do  not,”  returned  the  judge  ;  “  if  you 
mean  that  plan  of  association  among  working-men 
in  which  they  undertake  to  conduct  for  themselves 
the  business  incident  to  their  own  work.  I  do 
not  expect  much  from  that  c  cooperative  system,’ 
notwithstanding  the  remarkable  successes  it  has 
shown  at  Rochdale  and  in  other  instances,  both  in 
England  and  on  the  Continent.  It  is  an  attempt 
on  the  part  of  men  who  represent  the  mechanical, 
constructive,  producing  faculties,  to  dispense  with 
the  cooperation  of  men  who  represent  the  organ¬ 
izing,  combining,  commercial  faculties,  and  I  hold 
that  these  two  sets  of  faculties  are  indispensable 
to  one  another.  The  mechanic  working-man  al- 


82 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


most  always,  Tinder  present  conditions,  is  a  work¬ 
ing-man,  in  the  received  sense  of  the  word,  simply 
because  he  has  no  aptitude  nor  training  for  the 
shrewd  arithmetic  of  commerce,  and  competes  at 
a  disadvantage,  for  that  reason,  in  the  scrambling 
division  of  worldly  goods.  Now  it  is  clearly  im¬ 
possible  for  a  number  of  men  in  this  luckless 
strait  to  gain  much  by  going  into  league  with  one 
another,  to  make  a  common  cause  of  the  common 
disadvantage  under  which  they  are  struggling. 
You  surely  cannot  evolve  such  a  thing  as  a  cor¬ 
porate  capability  for  traffic  or  industrial  manage¬ 
ment  by  any  conceivable  multiplication  together 
of  individual  incapabilities.  You  may  put  six¬ 
pences  and  shillings  enough  together  to  form  the 
capital  that  will  create  and  sustain  an  iron  foun- 
dery  or  a  cotton-mill  ;  hut  in  a  body  of  men  whose 
efficient  faculty  of  accumulation  is  limited  to  the 
mere  saving  of  sixpences  and  shillings,  where  are 
you  going  to  find,  or  how  are  you  going  to  de¬ 
velop,  the  faculty  that  can  handle  such  a  capital 
and  work  profitable  results  out  of  it  ?  This  ‘  co¬ 
operative  ’  theory  of  industrial  reform  is  totally 
fallacious,  in  my  judgment,  because  it  makeS  no 
account  of  the  competition  of  faculties  out  of 
which  tlie#  whole  problem  arises.  As  I  look  at 
the  matter,  the  only  cooperation  that  can  possibly 
achieve  any  equitable  social  change  is  coopera¬ 
tion  between  the  faculties  of  the  artisan  and  the 


THIRD  EVENING. 


83 


faculties  of  tlie  man  of  business,  established  upon 
any  terms  that  shall  make  a  common  cause  be¬ 
tween  them,  in  place  of  the  competition  and  an¬ 
tagonism  to  which  they  are  necessarily  committed 
under  our  present  industrial  system.  That  is 
what  I  mean  when  I  speak  of  the  organization  of 
capital  and  labor  upon  a  footing  of  copartnership. 

“  Mind  you,  I  do  not  claim  an  equal  copart¬ 
nership  ;  for  equity  and  equality,  as  I  have  said 
before,  are  two  very  different  things.  I  am  not  a 
communist,  nor  an  agrarian,  nor  a  social  revolu¬ 
tionist  of  any  sort.  I  do  not  want  to  abolish 
property,  nor  riches,  nor  poverty  even,  so  far  as 
poverty  is  a  just  consequence  of  the  inefficient 
or  unfaithful  performance  of  a  man’s  part  in  the 
work  of  the  world.  Equality  of  goods  I  have  no 
wish  to  see  brought  about ;  I  would  not  have  it 
in  society  if  I  could.  All  that  I  contend  for,  as 
being  necessary  to  justice  between  the  working¬ 
man  and  the  business-man — between  the  laborer 
and  the  capitalist — is  that  fundamental  equality  of 
footing,  in  their  relations  to  one  another,  which 
the  terms  of  any  sort  of  copartnership  between 
them  will  establish,  no  matter  how  insignificant 
at  first  may  be  the  benefit  to  the  former.  Any¬ 
thing,  to  begin  with,  that  will  engraft  a  different 
principle  upon  this  wages  system  of  ours,  under 
which  men  are  mere  marketable  machines  for 
such  and  such  work,  selling  themselves  by  the  day 


84 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


or  the  year,  instead  of  being  sold  for  a  lifetime  as 
the  slaves  were.'5 

“  I  suppose,  then,”  said  I,  “  that  you  hope  for 
the  success  and  spread  of  the  experiment  which 
has  already  been  somewhat  tried,  in  a  few  pro¬ 
prietary  industrial  establishments,  of  making  divi¬ 
dends  from  the  annual  profits  of  the  concern  to 
the  working-men  employed  ?  ” 

“  Yes,  that  is  my  hope.  These  experiments 
furnish  proof,”  continued  the  judge,  “  that  some 
consciousness  of  the  inequity,  and  some  percep¬ 
tion  of  the  vicious  economy  of  the  prevailing 
wages  system,  have  begun  to  be  awakened,  and  I 
am  confident  that  both  the  moral  feeling  and  the 
enlightened  judgment  which  are  to  condemn  that 
system  will  gain  a  steady  growth.  I  am  not  at  all 
surprised  that  these  experiments  in  the  organizing 
of  a  partnership  between  the  working-men  and 
the  managing  capitalist,  who  supplies  and  directs 
their  work,  have  sometimes  failed.  AVe  are  sure 
to  hear  more  of  the  failures  than  of  the  successes, 
and,  although  some  of  them  may  belong  in  the 
ordinary  category  of  business  failures,  consequent 
upon  adverse  times  or  unsound  management,  they 
are  naturally  enough  all  charged  against  the  ex¬ 
periment  to  which  they  are  incident.  In  many 
cases,  without  doubt,  the  failure  is  rightly  so 
charged.  There  is  much  to  be  practically  learned 
before  a  successful  adjustment  of  dividends  from 


THIRD  EVENING. 


85 


tlieir  joint  production  can  be  made  between  labor 
and  capital,  and  between  the  laborer  and  the  man¬ 
ager. 

“  The  working-men  have  much  to  learn.  I  am 
not  blind  at  all  to  the  obstacles  which  their  preva¬ 
lent  ignorance  of  the  conditions  of  production 
and  trade,  and  their  characteristic  inaptitude  for 
knowledge  or  appreciation  of  what  we  call  busi¬ 
ness  affairs,  throw  in  the  way  of  a  reformation  of 
the  industrial  system.  There  are  comparatively 
few  among  them  who  apprehend  in  the  slightest 
degree  the  just  merits  of  their  own  cause.  Their 
demands  and  their  whole  attitude,  taking  them  as 
a  class,  are  generally  unreasoning  and  provocative 
of  the  very  antagonism  by  which  they  are  wronged. 
I  quite  believe  that  the  selfishness  of  capital  can 
more  easily  be  overcome  than  this  blind  unreason 
on  the  labor-side.  It  will  resist  with  less  obsti¬ 
nacy,  perhaps,  the  generous,  harmonizing  forces 
that  are  at  work  in  human  culture.  But  I  know 
that  those  forces  are  invincible,  and  that  they  will 
have  their  way  in  the  end.  It  is  but  a  question 
of  time.  The  ferment  of  the  age  compels  all 
men  to  learn.  The  capitalist,  on  his  part,  will 
learn  the  wisdom  of  magnanimity  in  using  his 
power — the  expediency  of  justice  ;  and  the  work¬ 
ing-man,  on  his  part,  will  learn  to  understand  the 
conditions  by  which  production  is  governed,  and 
to  estimate  his  dues  from  it  by  some  logical  reck- 


8G 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


oning.  But  lie  may  have  to  learn  through  bitter 
teachings  of  experience,  as  I  fear  that  he  must, 
because  his  class  is  being  blindly  led  now  into  a 
conflict  with  the  very  laws  of  industrial  economy, 
under  which  its  own  rights  must  be  adjudicated 
and  established.” 

“  I  begin  to  see,  sir,”  remarked  John,  “  that 
your  views  are  not  so  radically  extreme  as  they 
seemed  to  be  at  first.  The  (  labor  question,'  as 
you  look  at  it,  holds  itself  quite  above  the  issues 
that  are  nowadays  being  raised  in  the  industrial 
world  between  labor  and  capital,  and  you  do  not 
sympathize,  I  take  it,  with  the  ‘  trades-union 5 
combinations,  which  interfere  so  mischievously 
with  almost  every  important  branch  of  productive 
enterprise.” 

“  Yes,  I  do  sympathize  with  them,”  said  the 
judge,  “  in  a  sorrowful  way.  I  sympathize  deeply 
with  the  discontented  feeling,  on  the  part  of  the 
working-class,  out  of  which  they  spring,  and  it  is 
very  sad  to  me  to  see  these  people,  who  have  be¬ 
come  conscious  that  there  is  something  wrong  in 
their  relations  to  the  industry  to  which  they  con¬ 
tribute,  misconceiving  so  entirely  the  nature  of  the 
wrong  and  aggravating  it  by  mistaken  means  of 
remedy.  They  organize  a  revolt  against — they 
know  not  what.  Not  against  the  wages  system, 
for  they  affirm  that,  and  confirm  it,  and  rivet  upon 
themselves  by  every  measure  which  they  adopt. 


THIRD  EVENING. 


They  exert  their  combined  influence  to  suppress 
the  individualization  of  skill  and  faculty,  which 
would  tend,  in  a  powerful  way,  to  break  down  the 
systematic  fixity  of  this  wages-paying  custom. 
They  level  down  to  one  mean  average  all  the  dif¬ 
ferent  degrees  of  the  efficient  value  of  labor  which 
they  severally  represent  in  their  several  trades; 
and  such  an  average  is  sure  to  be  depressed  toward 
the  minimum  extreme,  by  the  least  skillful,  the 
least  conscientious,  the  least  intelligent  labor  in 
every  trade.  It  is  pitiful  to  see  the  mistake  which 
so  many  of  the  working-men  make  in  their  trades- 
unions,  when  they  combine  to  enforce  and  main¬ 
tain  any  uniform  rate  of  wages,  and  so  suppress, 
as  far  as  possible,  among  themselves,  all  competi¬ 
tive  ambition — all  competition  of  faculty  and  spirit 
in  their  own  ranks.  By  this  course  they  leave 
little  inducement  for  any  working-man  to  excel 
in  his  work,  either  through  the  acquirement  of 
knowledge  and  skill,  or  through  industrial  con¬ 
scientiousness.  So  far  as  they  can,  they  put  the 
most  skilled  and  most  efficient  workman  upon  the 
same  footing  with  the  laziest,  the  most  careless 
and  the  least  capable.  It  is  a  woful  mistake  in 
its  effect  upon  the  character  of  the  working-class, 
and  therefore  in  its  effect  uj>on  the  standing  and 
strength  and  social  condition  of  the  class.” 

“  But  is  that  the  worst  mistake  of  the  trades- 
unions  ?  ”  asked  I. 


88 


TALKS  ABOUT  LAB  OK 


“Yes,”  replied  the  judge,  “because  it  is  their 
fundamental  mistake.  Almost  everything  else 
which  they  wrongly  do  originates  in  this  and 
forms  part  of  it.  There  is  more  than  a  mistake  in 
some  of  their  measures ;  there  is  the  nature  of 
crime.  There  is  a  criminal  violation  of  their  own 
industrial  rights :  as  when  they  undertake,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  by  their  ndes  and  by  the  influential  power 
of  their  combination,  to  restrict  the  liberty  which 
belongs  to  each  man  to  control  the  disposition  of 
his  own  labor ;  when  they  assume  to  dictate  to 
their  members  the  terms  upon  which  each  one 
shall  work,  and  to  say  when  and  where  and  how 
he  shall  accept  employment,  and  when  and  where 
and  how  he  shall  not :  also,  when  they  assume 
to  legislate  for  any  branch  of  industry  concerning 
its  hours  of  labor,  the  number  of  apprentices  or 
pupils  that  shall  be  annually  received  into  its 
several  establishments,  and  other  matters  of  that 
sort,  touching  which  there  can  be  no  conceivable 
right  of  interference  with  individual  liberty  lodged 
anywhere,  neither  in  any  particular  body  of  men 
nor  in  the  whole  body  of  society.  I  would  not 
have  much  intervention  of  law  in  dealing  with 
matters  pertaining  to  the  organization  and  regu¬ 
lation  of  the  industrial  system  of  a  country,  but  I 
would  have  all  such  interferences  with  individual 
freedom  as  these,  whether  by  combinations  on  the 
side  of  labor  or  on  the  side  of  capital,  rigorously 


THIRD  EVENING. 


89 


suppressed,  by  stringent  prohibitions  of  law,  strin¬ 
gently  enforced.” 

“  And  what  of  labor  6  strikes,’  ”  said  I ;  u  how 
do  you  regard  them  ?  ” 

“  I  can  only  condemn  them,”  replied  the  judge, 
“  so  far  as  they  are  coercively  organized.  It  is 
assuredly  every  man’s  right  to  refuse  to  labor  for 
another,  or  in  cooperation  with  another,  if  the 
terms  proposed  are  not  satisfactory  to  him ;  pro¬ 
vided  he  can  afford  to  refuse,  and  does  not  make 
himself  dependent  upon  the  charity  of  his  fellows 
for  support  by  refusing.  It  is  equally  the  right 
of  a  number  'of  men  to  voluntarily  combine  in  re¬ 
fusing  to  work  on  given  terms,  if  they  are  unitedly 
able  to  support  themselves  for  a  certain  time  with¬ 
out  work ;  and  it  is  their  right  under  many  cir¬ 
cumstances  to  make  the  pressure  of  their  absten¬ 
tion  from  work  bear  as  hard  as,  by  voluntary 
union,  it  can  be  made  to  bear  upon  the  interests 
of  employing  capital,  for  the  purpose  of  extorting 
better  terms.  But  there  are  not  many  labor- 
strikes,  I  think,  in  which  coercion  of  some  sort  is 
not  employed  to  bring  about  the  union  of  those 
who  take  part  in  it.  A  few  restless,  dominating 
spirits  get  leadership  in  the  matter,  by  sheer  dog¬ 
matic  and  dictatorial  force,  and  a  most  tvrannical 
constraint  is  often  exercised  upon  the  minority,  if 
not  upon  the  majority,  of  the  members  of  the  in¬ 
dustrial  organization  concerned.  The  workman 


90 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


who  prefers  to  continue  in  employment  on  the  ex¬ 
isting  terms,  rather  than  become  idle,  or  who  feels 
that  he  cannot  afford  to  surrender  employment,  and 
that  the  suffering  to  he  imposed  upon  his  family  by 
such  surrender  involves  a  deeper  wrong  than  the 
one  against  which  he  is  asked  to  array  himself  in 
revolt,  finds  usually  among  his  associates  in  his 
own  class  no  toleration  whatever  of  his  personal 
rights,  interests,  or  convictions  of  duty.  Ilis  claim 
to  individual  freedom  of  action  is  resented  and  re¬ 
sisted  with  all  the  tremendous  forces  of  hostility 
and  oppression  which  any  class  organization  can 
bring  to  bear  upon  its  members.  If  he  does  not 
suffer  personal  violence  from  his  fellows,  as  he 
very  often  does,  he  suffers  a  persecuting  ostracism 
which  is  even  harder  to  bear  up  against.  It  is 
by  such  coercion,  I  think,  that  most  ‘  strikes 9  are 
brought  about,  and  they  are  generally  more  ty¬ 
rannical  and  more  cruel,  I  am  afraid,  than  the 
wrongs  in  wages-paying  which  they  undertake  to 
redress.  The  men  who  set  them  on  foot  seem  to 
be  commonly  of  the  mischief-making  sort — dis¬ 
turbers,  agitators,  demagogues.  They  are  men  of 
an  energetic  and  combative  disposition,  without 
much  judgment,  and  without  much  scruple,  some¬ 
times.  They  love  strife  and  turbulence  ;  they  find 
their  congenial  element  in  such  a  state  of  things, 
and  they  gain  some  importance  when  they  bring  it 
about.  Such  ynen  are  no  doubt  actuated  more  by 


THIRD  EVENING. 


91 


vanity  and  by  their  appetite  for  controversy  than 
they  are  by  any  intelligent  sense  of  rights  and 
wrongs,  or  by  any  conscientious  solicitude  for  the 
interests  of  the  working-class.  They  do  not  rep¬ 
resent  the  judgment  or  the  feeling  of  that  class, 
and  yet  the  imperious,  combative  energy  which 
they  possess  wins  for  them  a  kind  of  leadership  in 
it  that  is  undoubtedly  mischievous.  The  same 
kind  of  fact  exhibits  itself  in  every  department  of 
society — conspicuously  in  its  political  formations, 
where  the  positive,  dogmatic,  aggressive,  and  not 
very  scrupulous  politicians  are  apt  to  override  bet¬ 
ter  counsels  in  public  affairs  and  have  their  way. 
It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  labor-strikes  are 
commonly  miscalculated  and  mistimed ;  that  they 
are  so  often  aggressive  rather  than  defensive  ;  that 
there  is  so  often  more  of  malice  than  of  self-asser¬ 
tion  in  their  spirit ;  that  they  are  so  often  aimed 
at  mischief  to  the  capitalist  rather  than  benefit  to 
the  laborer  ;  that  they  so  often  represent  a  fatuous 
revolt  against  the  fundamental  laws  of  production 
and  exchange,  and  that  their  effect  so  often  is  lo¬ 
cally  destructive  or  injurious  to  the  industries  in 
which  they  occur.  Theoretically,  the  labor-strike 
is  a  legitimate  measure  of  self-defense  and  self- 
assertion  on  the  part  of  the  laboring-class  against 
the  managing-capitalist  class,  under  their  present 
relations  to  one  another ;  but,  practically,  I  am 
afraid,  it  is  a  measure  seldom  wisely  or  honestly 
resorted  to.” 


92 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


9 


u  I  tliink  that  is  true,”  remarked  John,  “  and 
the  working-men  seem  to  exhibit  just  as  much  of 
a  disposition  to  use  their  opportunities  against 
capital  in  a  grinding,  oppressive,  and  aggressive 
way,  as  the  capitalists  do,  on  their  side,  to  make  a 
hard  use  of  the  advantages  which  they  hold  over 
labor.  They  do  it  with  less  judgment,  too,  and 
with  a  kind  of  vindictiveness  which  does  not  ap¬ 
pear  on  the  other  side.  They  so  often  organize 
their  strikes  in  some  department  of  production 
just  when  the  investors  of  capital  in  that  depart¬ 
ment  are  struggling  hard  against  adverse  condi¬ 
tions  in  it,  and  make  demands  which  all  the  cir¬ 
cumstances  of  the  market  then  surrounding  the 
particular  industry  in  question  render  it  wholly 
impossible  to  accede  to.  At  other  times  they  fatu¬ 
ously  serve  the  selfish  interests  of  their  employers, 
by  interrupting  some  industry  which  the  capital¬ 
ists  engaged  in  it  are  very  glad  to  have  suspended, 
so  that  there  seems  to  he  good  reason,  in  frequent 
cases,  for  suspecting  that  the  employers  have  se¬ 
cretly  instigated  the  strike,  and  thus  have  brought 
about  a  check  upon  production  without  responsi¬ 
bility  or  cost  to  themselves.  It  is  hardly  to  be 
wondered  at  that  this  blindness  and  folly  and  mis¬ 
chievous  disposition  in  the  laboring-classes  loses 
sympathy  for  them  among  intelligent  lookers  on, 
and  produces  an  antagonistic  feeling  in  the  ranks 
of  the  employing  capitalists.” 


THIRD  EVENING. 


93 


“No,”  said  tlie  judge,  “it  is  all  natural 
enough,  and  that  is  the  troublesome  feature  of 
the  problem  in  its  present  stage.  The  meaner 
parts  of  human  nature  are  involved  on  both  sides 
of  it.  There  is  just  as  much  selfishness  and  just 
as  much  narrow  one-sidedness  of  consideration  on 
the  part  of  the  laborers  as  there  is  on  the  part-  of 
the  capitalists,  with  more  ignorance,  but  wdtli  less 
power.  I  give  attention  chiefly  to  those  wrongs 
in  the  relationship  between  the  two  which  the 
capitalists  and  managers  of  our  industrial  organi¬ 
zation  are  responsible  for,  because  they  represent 
the  stronger  side.  They  hold  the  powrer,  so  much 
more  than  the  others  do,  to  act  wrongfully,  and 
their  duty  is  commensurate  wTith  their  power. 
Between  two  parties,  in  any  system  of  wrongs, 
the  movement  of  redress  and  remedy  must  come 
from  the  stronger  one.  The  most  potent  moral 
influence  in  the  world  is  that  of  magnanimity  pro¬ 
ceeding  out  of  power,  and  we  must  invoke  that 
in  this  matter  before  any  solution  of  the  problem 
can  be  possible.  Let  the  managers  and  holders  of 
capital  begin  to  acknowledge  that  the  measure  of 
their  power  is  not  the  measure  of  their  just  rights, 
by  beginning  to  associate  the  working-men  in  in¬ 
terest  wdtli  them,  under  some  system  of  partner¬ 
ship,  wdtli  some  system  of  dividends  introduced  to 
supplement  the  wages  system — and  the  moment 
they  do  this,  I  know  that  the  working-men  will  be- 


91 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


gin  to  be  inquisitive  for  themselves  about  tlie  cir¬ 
cumstances  and  conditions  on  which  their  several 
industries  depend.  They  will  begin  to  observe  and 
apprehend  the  phenomena  of  the  market,  out  of 
which  the  laws  of  industrial  economy  are  deduced. 
They  will  begin  to  understand  better  the  terms  on 
which  their  particular  labor  is  associated  with  all 
other  labor  in  the  industrial  organization  of  the 
civilized  world.  They  will  do  so  on  account  of 
having  become  partners  instead  of  servitors  in  the 
several  industries,  by  virtue  of  which  change  they 
will  have  necessarily  acquired  an  independent 
personal  interest  in  such  matters  of  knowledge. 
They  must  then  be  inspired  by  every  personal 
motive  to  act  in  cooperation  with  the  managers  of 
capital,  in  their  several  branches  of  productive  in¬ 
dustry,  and  the  desire  to  cooperate  will  be  effec¬ 
tive  in  promoting  their  intelligence. 

“  This  industrial  reform  is  one  in  which  there 
must  be  preaching  as  well  as  teaching,  and  the 
preaching  comes  first  in  importance  ;  wherefore  I 
prefer  now  to  act  the  preacher.  Political  economy 
alone  is  not  enough,  as  I  have  said  before.  Social 
ethics  has  quite  as  much  to  do  with  the  question, 
if  not  more.  We  must  preach  the  doctrine  of 
justice,  as  well  as  teach  the  laws  of  production 
and  trade. 

“  It  will  not  do  much  good  to  go  to  the  trades- 
union  with  instructions  in  political  economy,  so 


THIRD  EVENING. 


95 


long  as  its  members  are  made  distrustful  of  all 
your  formulas  by  a  vague  and  rankling  conscious¬ 
ness  of  something  arbitrary  in  the  system  of  the 
division  of  industrial  products,  which  political 
economy  gives  countenance  to.  We  must  first 
root  out  of  public  sentiment  the  old  barbaric  no¬ 
tion  that — • 

‘  lie  may  take  who  has  the  power, 

And  he  may  keep  who  can.’ 

We  must  root  it  out  just  as  completely  with  ref¬ 
erence  to  the  power  which  attaches  to  wTealth,  to 
possessory  rights,  to  superior  mercantile  facul¬ 
ties,  and  to  superior  opportunities  in  acquisition, 
as  we  have  already  rooted  it  out,  among  civilized 
men,  with  reference  to  the  brute  power  which  be¬ 
longed  of  old  to  bodily  strength  and  baronial  cas¬ 
tles,  to  the  lance,  the  sword,  and  the  coat  of  mail. 
We  must  educate  public  opinion  to  recognize  just 
rights  in  the  matter  which  law  cannot  enforce,  but 
which  its  own  silent  legislation  may  affirm  and 
make  good. 

“  Then  political  economy  may  hope  to  win  the 
ear  of  the  working-man  and  reach  his  understand¬ 
ing.  Then  the  trades-union  may  be  made  to  be¬ 
come  a  powerful  organism  in  the  industrial  world, 
and  be  brought  out  of  conflict  into  cooperation 
with  capital,  in  the  productive  enterprises  of  soci¬ 
ety.  The  guilds  of  the  mediaeval  craftsmen  were 


96 


.  TALES  ABOUT  LABOR. 


institutions  of  splendid  usefulness  in  many  re¬ 
spects.  The  modern  trades-unions  may  be  the 
same,  and  more,  in  much  the  same  direction.  I 
look  forward  to  the  time  when  they  will  be  en¬ 
couraged  to  take  upon  themselves  the  responsible 
guardianship  of  all  the  interests  of  the  mechanic 
industries — each  its  own  ;  fixing  and  maintaining 
a  high  standard  of  excellence  in  workmanship  for 
every  trade  ;  graduating  the  mechanics  in  their 
several  arts  and  conferring  diplomas  and  degrees, 
as  the  colleges  do,  with  such  strictness  and  fairness 
and  authority  that  the  classifications  of  the  union 
or  guild  shall  be  recognized  in  the  labor-market ; 
opening  their  doors  to  all  new-comers  widely, 
without  any  bars  except  such  as  these  standards  of 
proficiency  will  set  up  ;  aiming  to  individualize — 
not  generalize — the  compensation  of  labor  in  each 
department  of  work,  by  individualizing  the  labor 
itself ;  looking  always  to  the  efficiency,  the  skill, 
the  productive  value,  of  each  man’s  work  for  the 
basis  of  the  apportionment  of  dividends  to  him 
from  the  production  to  which  he  contributes. 

“You  may  say  that  I  am  visionary;  but  re¬ 
member  that  I  am  only  trying  to  define  the  state 
of  things  which  must  be  brought  about,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  if  the  just  harmony  of  rights  and  interests 
between  labor  and  capital  is  ever  to  be  attained. 
I  do  not  expect  it  very  soon.  I  am  not  sure  that 
we  are  within  ten  centuries  of  it  yet.  I  am  not 


THIRD  EVENING. 


97 


sure,  in  fact,  that  it  will  ever  be  reached.  But  I 
do  have  a  strong  faith,  nevertheless,  in  the  final 
completeness  of  the  evolution  of  justice  among 
men,  before  human  history  ends,  and  I  am  willing 
to  be  called  visionary  in  that,  if  you  please  to  con¬ 
sider  me  so.” 

The  judge  rose  as  he  finished  speaking,  and, 
in  his  prompt  way,  took  leave  of  us  for  the  even¬ 
ing,  so  that  we  had  no  opportunity  to  reply  to  his 
last  remarks. 


5 


FOUKTH  EVENING. 


ABOUT  TIIE  JUST  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR. 

The  Increase  of  Production  within  a  Century  past. — The  Judge’s 
Estimates. — Machine-Labor  and  its  Results. — The  Working¬ 
man’s  Measure  of  Gain. — Wasteful  Consumption. — What  it 
is  and  what  Kind  of  Waste  can  be  socially  restrained. — The 
Sources  of  Increase  to  the  Capital  Fund,  and  of  Increased 
Dividends  to  Labor. 

When  tlie  judge  came  lie  was  a  little  late,  and 
excused  himself  by  saying  that  he  had  taken  time 
to  look  up  a  few  passages  in  the  political  econo¬ 
mists,  touching  points  which  he  thought  we  should 
now  have  to  consider,  and  especially  with  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  so-called  “  wages-fund,”  by  which  the 
compensation  of  labor  is  said  to  he  limited. 

I  laughed  at  this,  and  rubbed  my  hands  with 
some  show  of  glee.  “  Now  you  are  coming  to 
hard  work,  judge,”  said  I.  “  I  have  been  think¬ 
ing  of  the  rough  road  that  we  should  put  you 
upon  when  we  began  to  ask  questions,  as  to  the 
source  from  which  you  expect  to  derive  a  substan¬ 
tial  and  permanent  increase  of  dividends  to  the 
laboring-men  of  all  classes.  If  there  is  any  sure 


/ 


FOURTH  EVENING.  99 

fact  in  political  economy,  I  should  say  it  is  that 
which  is  stated  in  the  description  of  what  is  called 
the  £  wages-fund : 5  the  tact,  namely,  that  at  any 
given  time  there  is  a  certain  tolerably  definite  ap¬ 
propriation  made  out  of  the  accumulations  from 
past  labor  to  maintain  present  production ;  that 
there  cannot  be  divided  among  the  producing  la¬ 
borers  of  that  time,  either  in  wages  or  otherwise, 
anything  exceeding  this  appropriation,  and  that 
their  several  shares  from  it  must  be,  on  the  aver¬ 
age,  according  to  the  proportion  between  their 
total  numbers  and  the  total  sum.  How  can  it  be 
otherwise  ?  I  do  not  see  that  you  can  put  any 
moral  restraint,  anymore  than  you  can  put  a  legal 
restraint,  upon  unproductive  consumption.  If 
you  are  able  to  make  it  a  matter  of  recognized 
duty  that  no  man  shall  profligately  and  wastefully 
consume  the  products  of  labor  in  idle  luxury,  you 
cannot  define  the  duty.  You  cannot  mark  points 
where  it  begins  and  where  it  ends.  You  cannot 
even  define  for  any  one  producing  member  of  so¬ 
ciety  a  limit  of  productive  consumption,  beyond 
which  his  consumption  shall  be  set  down  as  un¬ 
productive.  The  food,  the  clothing,  and  the  shel¬ 
ter  of  the  producer  belong,  of  course,  within  the 
range  of  his  productive  consumption ;  but  what 
kind  of  food  ? — what  kind  of  clothing  ? — what 
kind  of  shelter  ?  What  latitude  of  selection  and 
variation  shall  he  have  within  recognized  bounds 


100 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


of  productive  consumption  ?  And  then  his  educa¬ 
tion  and  his  culture  are  just  as  much  objects  of  pro¬ 
ductive  consumption  as  the  feeding  and  protecting 
of  his  body  are,  because  they  contribute  to  his  pro¬ 
ductive  efficiency  and  capacity.  IIow  much  shall  be 
allowed  for  these  ?  How  much  schooling  ?  IIow 
many  books?  IIow  much  travel?  How  much 
leisure  for  observation  and  comparison  ?  How 
much  recreation  to  preserve  the  elasticity  of  his 
energies  ?  How  much  exercise  of  hospitality  ? 
How  many  household  conveniences,  and  refine¬ 
ments,  and  adornments  ?  How  many  artistic  indul¬ 
gences  ?  IIow  much  gratification  of  rational 
tastes  ?  Where  shall  we  say  that  productive  con¬ 
sumption  ends,  in  his  case,  and  unproductive  con¬ 
sumption  begins  ?  We  cannot  say.  It  must  be 
impossible,  therefore,  to  define  any  rule  of  duty 
for  governing  the  consumption  of  the  products  of 
labor.  The  broad  rule  which  condemns  profligacy 
and  wastefulness  cannot  be  reduced  to  a  definite 
standard.  Those  who  command  possession  of  the 
products  of  labor  are  left  substantially  free  to  con¬ 
sume  them  as  they  please.  The  share  which  they 
will  reserve  from  their  personal  consumption,  year 
by  year,  and  dedicate  to  renewed  production,  must 
depend  upon  the  inducements  to  accumulation  by 
which  they  are  acted  on  ;  and  those  inducements 
are  very  nearly  constant  in  their  influence  upon 
men  in  a  given  state  of  civilization.  I  do  not  see 


FOURTH  EVENING, 


101 


liow  we  can  materially  strengthen  them,  or  mate¬ 
rially  augment  their  effect ;  and  I  do  not  see, 
therefore,  how  we  can  bring  about  any  consider¬ 
able  increment  of  the  c  wages-fund,’  or  the  capital 
out  of  which  labor  is  to  be  paid,  proportionately 
to  the  number  of  those  who  have  to  draw  their 
compensation  from  it.  If  you  can  tell  me,  my 
dear  judge,  pray  do  so  at  once,  for  I  am  impatient 
to  learn.” 

“  I  must  admit,”  replied  the  judge,  “  that  this 
is  no  easy  part  of  our  subject  which  we  are  ap¬ 
proaching  now.  We  are  coming  into  fogs  that 
are  sometimes  pretty  thick.  I  have  groped  in 
them,  and  stumbled  and  traveled  round  and  round 
in  bewilderment  without  making  headway,  a  great 
many  times.  But  I  think  that  if  we  use  our  eyes 
steadily  we  can  gather  some  light  out  of  the  murky 
confusion  to  guide  us,  nevertheless. 

“  The  first  thing  to  be  certain  about,  no  doubt, 
is  whether  labor  has  or  has  -not  become  productive 
enough  to  furnish  the  means  for  any  considerable 
increase  of  dividends  to  labor,  without  resorting 
to  communism,  or  the  equal  partitioning  of  goods, 
which  I  do  not  believe  in  at  all ;  without  inter¬ 
fering,  in  fact,  with  the  inequalities  of  wealth  that 
are  just,  nor  diminishing  in  the  slightest  degree 
the  inducements  which  stimulate  even  the  great¬ 
est  accumulation  of  wealth  by  honest  means. 
What  do  you  think  about  that  ?  ” 


102  TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 

“Well,”  said  I,  “it  is  certain  that  the  produc¬ 
tiveness  of  labor  has  been  enormously  augmented 
since  the  present  century  began,  by  the  mechanical 
devices  which  we  call  labor-saving,  although  it 
would  be  more  proper  to  describe  them  as  labor¬ 
helping.  But  the  capacity  for  consumption  in  the 
human  race  seems  to  outrun  its  capacity  for  pro¬ 
duction,  no  matter  how  the  latter  may  be  quick¬ 
ened.  New  wants  are  developed  by  the  ability  to 
supply  them,  even  faster  than  the  supplying  capa¬ 
bility  evolves  itself,  so  that  those  who  can  com¬ 
mand  the  enjoyment  of  their  desires  may  absorb 
the  products  of  labor  as  freely  as  they  ever  did. 
We  evidently  cannot  surfeit  human  desires,  and 
we  seem,  therefore,  to  be  making  no  progress  to¬ 
ward  the  production  of  a  surplus  beyond  the  greed 
of  the  greedy,  out  of  which  it  will  be  any  easier 
to  make  a  generous  dividend  to  the  dependent 
laborers  of  the  world  than  it  was  a  thousand  years 
ago.  The  conditions  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
relatively  considered,  seem  to  remain  about  the 
same,  after  all  the  gain  in  productiveness  that  has 
accrued  to  civilized  labor.” 

“  That  maybe  true,”  returned  the  judge,  “but 
we  will  consider  the  point  hereafter.  What  I  wish 
to  look  at  now  is  simply  the  fact  of  the  enormously- 
increased  and  increasing  productiveness  of  labor, 
which  is  surely  a  fact  of  tremendous  import  in 
human  history.  I  do  not  think  that  we,  any  of 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


103 


us,  realize  tlie  magnitude  of  the  increase  and  the 
cumulative  ratio  at  which  it  has  been  going  on 
since  the  Aryan  intellect  began  to  be  scientifically 
exercised,  and  its  inventive  faculties  were  brought 
fairly  into  play.  If  we  could  exactly  know  how 
many  workmen  would  have  been  necessary  two 
hundred  years  ago,  with  the  processes  and  ap¬ 
pliances  of  that  age,  to  furnish  in  a  given  time  the 
products  that  are  now  turned  out  in  the  same  time 
by  the  labor  of  England,  France,  Germany,  and 
the  United  States,  wTe  should  doubtless  be  as¬ 
tounded  by  the  figures.  It  would  be  hard,  how¬ 
ever,  to  gather  the  data  for  even  an  approximate 
calculation  of  the  sort ;  because  every  present  prod¬ 
uct  represents  such  complicated  intermixings  of 
labor.  In  the  case  of  a  product  of  machine-work, 
for  example,  there  enters  into  it  all  the  successive, 
multifarious  operations  of  industry  by  which  the 
metals  and  wood  composing  the  material  of  the 
machine  in  question  were  produced  and  brought 
together ;  then  the  inventing  and  experimenting 
by  which  this  machine  was  perfected ;  then,  be¬ 
hind  these,  another  complication  of  the  same  fac¬ 
tors  of  labor  in  the  other  machines  which  have  con¬ 
tributed  help  in  the  making  of  this  particular  one ; 
and  so  on,  indefinitely,  almost.  If  we  were  able 
to  thus  determine  the  quantity  of  human  labor 
which  the  machine  itself  represents,  from  first  to 
last,  going  back,  very  likely,  to  years  before  it  was 


104 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


ever  dreamed  of,  we  should  then  have  to  distribute 
this  by  equal  division  over  the  whole  product  of 
its  work,  from  the  time  it  was  first  set  in  motion 
until  it  wears  itself  out,  with  allowance  made  for 
repairs  and  improvements  meantime.  That  done, 
we  should  next  have  to  trace  out  the  innumerable 
tributary  industries  which  have  entered  into  the 
production  and  bringing  together  of  the  materials 
upon  which  the  machine  operates,  or  which  it  is 
employed  to  fashion  into  a  given  shape ;  and  these, 
in  most  cases,  will  include,  first  and  last,  the  work 
of  farmers,  miners,  machinists,  inventors,  scientific 
discoverers,  merchants,  bankers,  clerks,  shipbuild¬ 
ers,  sailors,  railroad  engineers,  and  mechanics  and 
working  men  in  a  hundred  avocations  at  least. 

“The  calculation  is  manifestly  an  impossible 
one,  and  any  attempt  to  determine  how  much  the 
productive  efficiency  of  human  labor  has  been 
multiplied  within  a  given  time  can  only  be  guess¬ 
work  at  the  best.  We  can  keep  our  estimates 
safely  within  reason,  however,  and  have  enough, 
perhaps,  to  found  all  necessary  conclusions  upon. 

“An  effort  was  made  not  long  ago  by  I)r. 
Engel,  the  director  of  the  Prussian  Statistical 
Bureau,  to  procure  statistics  of  the  steam-power  in 
use  in  the  world,  lie  was  only  partially  success!* ul, 
but  from  the  data  gathered  he  estimated — if  the 
report  that  1  have  seen  is  correct — that  there  can¬ 
not  be  less  than  from  three  to  three  and  a  half 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


105 


millions  of  liorse-power  at  work  in  the  stationary 
engines  of  the  world,  and  ten  millions  of  horse¬ 
power  in  the  land  locomotive  engines.  The  marine 
engines  add  considerable  to  this,  but  I  shall  not 
take  them  into  account  at  present.  Now,  this 
steam  power  which  is  at  work  on  the  continental 
portions  of  the  globe — most  of  it  in  Europe  and 
America — drawing  loads,  lifting  burdens,  forging 
metals,  grinding  corn,  whirling  spindles  and  driv¬ 
ing  the  shuttles  in  a  million  of  looms,  is  so  much 
force,  brought  to  the  help  of  human  labor,  which 
is  maintained  without  any  consumption  of  animal 
or  vegetable  food.  The  feeding  of  it  is  from 
mineral  stores  laid  up  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  ; 
its  activity  draws  nothing  from  the  resources  of 
the  soil  of  the  globe,  except  to  the  extent  of  the 
food  of  the  miners  who  dig  the  coal  which  is 
burned  in  the  engine-furnace,  and  the  force  main¬ 
tained  in  their  muscles  is  to  the  force  generated  by 
the  product  of  their  labor  as  one  to  a  thousand,  at 
most.  This  is  an  important  fact  to  consider  in 
connection  with  what  we  are  discussing,  because 
the  limits  to  vegetation  on  the  soil-surface  of  the 
earth  are  the  chief  limits  imposed  upon  human 
labor.  This  steam  labor-force,  which  is  fed  with 
coals  instead  of  with  grains  or  grasses,  is  equal  to 
the  working  force  of  about  25,000,000  horses,  be¬ 
cause  the  theoretical  c  horse-power  ’  of  the  steam 
engine  is  nearly  equivalent  to  the  average  actual 


106 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


working  power  of  two  horses,  according  to  the 
calculations  now  most  accepted.  Hence,  to  do  the 
same  work,  of  transportation,  of  lifting,  of  grind¬ 
ing,  of  crushing,  and  of  moving  machinery  which 
acts  in  the  place  of  human  fingers  and  hands, 
25,000,000  horses  would  have  to  he  employed — 
supposing  that  horses  were  capable  of  the  same 
work,  with  the  same  steadiness  and  celerity  and  in 
the  same  efficient  way,  which  they  are  not.  The 
horse  consumes,  I  should  say,  as  much  food,  at 
least,  as  three  men.  It  is  true  that  man’s  food 
ordinarily  costs  more  labor  than  that  of  the  horse, 
because  he  wants  a  greater  variety  in  it,  and  em¬ 
ploys  labor  to  bring  him  tea  from  China,  coffee 
from  Java,  sugar  from  the  "West  Indies,  etc. ;  but, 
relatively  to  the  producing  capabilities  of  the  soil 
of  the  earth,  a  horse  must  consume  not  less  than 
three  times  as  much  as  a  man,  and  competes  with 
man  in  that  ratio  for  the  subsistence  which  the 
earth  yields.  To  put  steam-power  therefore  in  the 
place  of  25,000,000  horses  is  equivalent  to  a  saving 
of  food  for  about  75,000,000  human  beings  more 
than  could  otherwise  be  fed  from  the  same  area  of 
soil,  under  the  same  state  of  cultivation.  This  is 
not,  my  dear  sir,  a  mere  matter  of  idle  speculation  ; 
for  statisticians  have  found  that,  in  all  civilized 
countries  of  the  world,  the  rate  of  increase  in  the 
number  of  horses  has  diminished  greatly  since  the 
introduction  of  steam-power  began  to  be  rapid  and 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


107 


universal,  which  was  less  than  half  a  .century  ago. 
The  effect  was  first  noticed  in  Europe,  I  believe, 
but  it  has  become  strongly  marked  in  this  country, 
as  well.  From  1850  to  1860  the  increase  of  horses 
in  the  United  States  was  at  the  rate  of  44  per 
cent.,  but  from  1860  to  1870  it  fell  to  14  per  cent. 
Something  must  be  allowed,  no  doubt,  for  the 
effects  of  the  war  in  the  last  decade,  but  not 
enough  to  account  for  half  this  great  decrease.  It 
represents  the  progress  of  the  substitution  of  in¬ 
animate  for  animate  dumb  servants  in  the  employ 
of  man.  I  do  not  care  to  predict  that  this  will  go 
so  far  as  to  displace  all  domestic  animals  from 
working  service,  but  I  can  see  that  invention  is 
pushing  the  horse  and  the  ox  out  of  employment 
very  fast,  and  that  every  year  the  sweep  of  this 
effect  appears  to  extend.  We  are  now  just  at  the 
point,  it  would  seem,  of  having  the  steam-engine 
fully  adapted  to  canal  navigation,  to  street-car 
locomotion,  to  ploughing  and  general  farm  work 
and  even  to  draft  service  on  common  roads.  In 
my  view,  this  movement  of  substitution  is  one  of 
vast  importance  and  significance,  not  only  because 
it  augments  the  efficiency  of  labor,  but  because  it 
tends  toward  the  taking  of  brute  animals  out  of 
competition  with  man  as  consumers  of  the  products 
of  the  soil,  and  thus  enormously  increases  the  stock 
which  remains  for  division  among  the  human  pro¬ 
ducers.  Do  you  agree  with  me  so  far  as  this  \  ” 


108 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


“  I  do,”  said  I.  u  Tlie  fact  which  you  have 
brought  to  notice  has  all  the  significance  that  you 
claim  for  it,  I  think,  and  it  becomes  very  interest¬ 
ing  to  me,  as  well  as  very  important,  in  that  view, 
which  I  have  never  seen  presented  before.” 

“  Very  well,  then,”  continued  the  judge,  “  we 
will  go  on :  the  stationary  steam-engines  ’in  the- 
world,  which  have  come  into  existence  almost 
wholly  within  the  last  half  century,  and  more  than 
half  of  them,  probably,  within  the  last  twenty 
years,  are  doing  a  great  variety  of  work ;  but 
chiefly  they  are  employed  in  propelling  machinery 
which  performs  mechanical  operations  that  for¬ 
merly  had  to  be  performed  by  the  Angers,  hands 
and  arms  of  working-men  and  working-women. 
Along  with  these  steam-engines,  there  is  also  being 
employed,  in  the  same  kind  of  work,  an  enormous 
water-power,  the  machinery  for  utilizing  which 
has  been  improved  within  our  own  generation  al¬ 
most  as  greatly  as  the  machinery  for  utilizing  the 
expansive  powder  of  steam  has  been  ;  and  this  rep¬ 
resents,  even  more  than  steam  does,  a  non-consum¬ 
ing  force,  doing  prodigious  work  for  man  without 
drawing  much  from  the  productive  resources  of 
the  soil.  The  water-power  in  use  is  fully  equal, 
perhaps,  to  the  steam-power,  and  both  of  these 
mighty  servants  are  driving  machines  which  man 
has  only  to  wait  upon  and  watch  and  direct,  and 
which  execute,  under  his  supervision  and  with  his 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


109 


help,  each  within  its  own  specialized- function,  all 
the  way  from  five  to  a  thousand  times  the  quan¬ 
tity  of  a  given  work  which  he  could  do  with  his 
unaided  hands. 

“  In  such  simple  mechanical  operations  as  the 
cutting  of  nails,  the  making  of  needles  and  pins, 
and  the  stamping  of  metals  into  shapes — where 
power  and  precision  in  one  quick  monotonous 
movement  are  the  only  requisites — the  multiplica¬ 
tion  of  product  by  machine  labor  over  hand  labor 
is  very  great.  In  constructive  processes  where  a 
combination  of  movements  is  necessary,  the  multi¬ 
plication  of  product  is  less,  and  proportionately  so, 
I  suspect,  to  the  mechanical  complications  involved. 
But  the  division  of  machine  labor  is  being  organ¬ 
ized  to  perfection,  in  the  same  wTay  as  the  division 
of  human  labor,  and  the  constant  tendency,  in 
almost  every  branch  of  manufacture,  is  toward  the 
resolving  of  one  complicated  machine  into  two 
or  three  or  four  simple  ones,  each  of  which  per¬ 
forms  a  single  operation  by  a  single  movement, 
thus  gaining  the  maximum  effect  of  power,  pre¬ 
cision  and  uniform  speed. 

“  But  even  in  the  more  complex  constructive 
operations,  the  gain  of  product  from  a  given 
quantity  of  human  labor,  employed  as  auxiliary 
to  machine  labor,  is  immense.  Take  the  making 
of  fabrics  for  clothing,  for  example.  The  power- 
looms  now  used  at  Manchester,  England,  for  the 


110 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


manufacture  of  common  cotton  goods,  are  each 
said  to  produce  daily,  on  the  average,  twenty-six 
pieces  of  cotton  cloth,  twenty-nine  yards  long  and 
twenty-five  inches  wide.  One  person  can  attend 
to  three  of  these  looms,  so  that  the  joint  daily 
product  of  the  man  and  the  machine  is  seventy- 
eight  pieces ;  whereas,  on  the  old  hand-loom  of 
1$00,  one  man,  working  one  loom,  produced  only 
four  pieces.  Here,  from  the  same  expenditure  of 
human  labor,  we  have  a  multiplication  of  prod¬ 
uct  almost  twenty  fold — less  the  labor  which  is 
represented  in  the  improved  machine,  in  the  en¬ 
gine  which  drives  it  and  in  the  fuel  which  the 
engine  consumes,  dividing  that  labor  down  to  the 
small  fraction  which  is  chargeable  against  one 
day’s  work  of  the  machine,  out  of  the  thousands 
of  days’  work  it  is  capable  of  doing  before  it  is 
worn  out.  We  shall  make  a  large  allowance  for 
the  capitalized  labor  in  this  machinery  if  we  set 
down  the  final  multiplication  of  product,  conse¬ 
quent  upon  the  improvement  of  mechanical  aids 
to  the  human  laborer,  at  fifteenfold. 

“  In  the  spinning  and  weaving  of  woollen 
cloths  and  all  finer  fabrics,  the  production  of  a 
given  number  of  workmen  has  been  multiplied, 
no  doubt,  in  a  ratio  somewhat  less;  but  still  it 
must  be  quite  within  reason  to  estimate  the  aver¬ 
age  multiplication  at  tenfold. 

“  When  we  pass  to  consider  the  making  of 


I 


FOURTH  EVENING.  Ill 

these  fabrics  into  clothing,  we  come  npon  the  most 
striking:  mechanical  achievement  of  our  own  ^en- 
eration — -the  sewing-machine.  I  shall  ask  the 
ladies  here  to  say  how  many  needle-women  one  of 
them  is  equal  to,  in  efficient  work  ?  ” 

“  Not  less  than  ten,  I  am  sure,”  said  my  wife. 

“  I  have  no  doubt  that  is  a  moderate  state¬ 
ment,”  continued  the  judge.  “  So  far,  then,  as 
concerns  one  of  the  primary  wants  of  man— his 
clothing — the  constructive  work,  taking  all  the 
successive  processes  after  the  raw  material  has 
been  produced,  is  undoubtedly  being  now  per¬ 
formed  by  not  more  than  one-tenth  of  the  work¬ 
men  and  workwomen,  for  a  given  quantity  and 
kind  of  product,  that  were  required  even  fifty  or 
sixty  years  ago. 

“  In  the  matter  of  shelter — house-building  and 
its  allied  industries — the  fact  cannot  be  very  dif¬ 
ferent,  although  I  should  make  a  somewhat  lower 
estimate.  Our  modern  wood-working  machinery 
has  wonderfully  revolutionized  the  carpenter’s 
trade.  The  planing  machine,  for  example,  prob¬ 
ably  performs  more  work  of  its  kind  in  a  day 
than  twenty  industrious  journeymen  could  do  with 
the  same  precision  and  perfectness,  using  hand 
tools,  and,  after  making  a  large  allowance  for  the 
labor  capitalized  in  the  machine,  in.  the  driving 
engine,  etc.,  we  can  safely  estimate  the  multiplica 
tion  of  product  in  this  part  of  building-labor  at 


112 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


fifteenfold.  Other  kindred  machines,  like  those 
for  grooving  and  tongning,  mortising  and  tenon¬ 
ing,  etc.,  accomplish  almost  as  much,  relatively 
to  hand  labor.  The  mechanical  aids  in  brick¬ 
making  have  become  scarcely  less  efficient.  But 
masonry,  on  the  other  hand,  has  not  yet  acquired 
its  share  of  help  from  the  mechanic  forces,  and  so 
much  hand-work,  of  fitting  together  and  finishing, 
remains  in  all  the  branches  of  building  industry, 
that  the  gross  average  increment  of  product,  com¬ 
paring  equal  quantities  of  labor,  must  be  con¬ 
siderably  less,  for  a  hundred  years  past,  than  in 
the  department  of  labor  that  we  considered  before. 
Taking  all  the  building  arts  together,  including 
those  which  deal  with  wood,  stone  and  metal,  and 
including  also  the  furnishings  and  the  fittings  of 
buildings,  I  should  think  it  reasonable  to  estimate 
that  human  labor  has  now,  at  least,  five  times  the 
productive  efficiency  that  it  had  a  century  ago. 

“  Now  let  us  look  at  that  department  of  labor 
which  stands  first  of  all — the  department  of  agri¬ 
cultural  labor — the  labor  which  not  only  produces 
the  most  of  man’s  food,  but  which  produces,  also, 
the  materials  on  which  the  greater  part  of  all  other 
labor  expends  itself.  Here  the  increment  of  prod¬ 
uct,  through  improved  processes  and  improved 
mechanical  aids,  is  necessarily  less.  The  soil  is 
an  independent  and  stubborn  factor  of  production. 
It  imposes  its  own  limits  upon  the  labor  to 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


113 


which  it  responds.  It  yields  more  product  to 
more  labor,  knowingly  applied,  but  it  cannot  be 
made  to  yield  proportionately.  The  ratio  of  its 
product  to  the  producing  labor  grows  steadily  less 
as  the  latter  is  increased.  The  one  obstinate 
limit,  therefore,  which  nature  has  imposed  upon 
the  productiveness  of  human  labor  is  found  right 
here.  But  even  here  the  achievements  of  mechan¬ 
ics  and  science  have  been  prodigious — in  three 
ways :  first,  by  multiplying  the  effectiveness  of  a 
given  quantity  of  labor  applied  to  a  given  area  of 
soil ;  secondly,  by  placing  at  the  command  of  the 
tiller  of  the  soil  the  reenforcement  of  extra  help 
which  he  needs,  temporarily,  at  the  seasons  of 
planting  and  harvesting,  especially  the  latter ; 
thirdly,  by  making  wider  areas  of  soil  tributary  to 
the  wants  of  given  communities,  by  increasing  the 
facilities  of  transportation. 

“As  for  the  first,  even  the  hand  tools  of  agri¬ 
cultural  labor  have  been  improved  so  much  that 
the  very  laziest  laborer  can  outstrip  with  them  the 
hardest-working  laborer  of  a  hundred  years  ago. 
With  the  cast-steel  plow  of  to-day,  shaped  with 
scientific  calculation,  to  realize  the  maximum  ef¬ 
fect  from  the  minimum  application  of  force,  the 
farmer  turns  far  more  sod,  with  the  same  wear  of 
his  horses  and  of  himself,  than  he  could  have  done 
with  the  iron  plow  of  even  forty  years  ago,  to  saj^ 
nothing  of  its  clumsier  predecessors.  Then  there 


114 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


are  the  steam  plows,  the  liarrows,  the  planters,  the 
cultivators,  the  mowing  machines,  the  reaping 
machines,  the  horse  rakes,  the  threshers,  the  smut- 
scouring  machines,  the  potato  diggers,  the  ditch 
diggers,  and  a  score  of  other  contrivances,  all  of 
which  have  come  or  are  coming  fast  into  common 
use.  I  have  no  doubt  that,  within  the  regions  to 
which  the  improved  farming  of  the  present  day 
extends,  these  machines,  taken  together,  have  re¬ 
duced  the  ordinary  working  force  of  men,  on 
given  areas  of  soil,  to  one-fourth  or  one-third  of 
the  laboring  force  employed  for  the  same  produc¬ 
tion  at  the  beginning  of  our  century. 

“  But  the  second  element  of  productive  prog¬ 
ress  in  agriculture  which  I  mentioned  a  moment 
ago  adds  something  to  the  increment.  A  given 
quantity  of  labor,  under  the  ordinary  conditions  of 
agriculture,  can  prepare  soil  and  plant  seeds  for  a 
greater  crop  than  the  same  labor  can  harvest, 
during  the  short  season  within  which  the  crop  has 
to  be  gathered  and  saved,  and  agriculture  was 
always  troubled  by  this  brief  periodical  need  of 
extra  harvesting  labor,  until  the  mechanical  in¬ 
ventor  made  a  provision  for  it  which  involves, 
simply,  the  investing  of  a  certain  small  capital,  em¬ 
bodied  in  certain  machines,  like  the  reaper  and  the 
mower.  It  has  been  estimated  that  McCormick’s 
reaping  machine  doubled  the  production  of  grain 
in  the  regions  of  the  West  where  it  was  introduced, 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


115 


simply  by  enabling  the  available  labor  of  those 
regions  to  harvest  the  crop  which  it  was  capable 
of  producing.  Without  the  reaping  machine,  the 
farmers  would  have  to  lose  half  of  their  crop,  if 
they  effectively  expended  all  the  labor  that  they 
could  expend  in  planting  and  cultivation,  or  else 
they  would  have  to  withhold  one  half  of  the  culti¬ 
vating  labor  which  they  might  apply  to  their  farms, 
in  order  to  produce  no  greater  crop  than  they  were 
able  to  gather  in.  In  either  case,  according  to  the 
calculation,  the  machine  saved  a  waste  of  pro¬ 
ductive  labor  to  the  extent  of  one  hundred  per 
cent. ;  and  that  reverted  effect  is  quite  additional 
to  its  own  direct  effect  upon  the  efficiency  of  labor 
while  being  operated. 

“  Thirdly  and  finally,  the  effectiveness  of  pro¬ 
ductive  labor  in  agriculture  has  been  augmented 
very  greatly  by  the  extraordinary  extension  and 
improvement,  during  late  years,  of  the  avenues 
and  vehicles  of  transportation.  The  resulting  de¬ 
crease  of  time  and  cost  in  the  carriage  of  products 
to  distant  markets  has  brought,  and  is  constantly 
bringing  about,  more  economical  divisions  of  agri¬ 
cultural  labor,  whereby  it  becomes  applied  with 
more  and  more  nearly  its  maximum  effect.  When 
any  considerable  portion  of  the  lands  of  some  re¬ 
gion  whose  climate  and  soil  are  best  adapted  to 
wheat-culture  has  to  be  devoted  to  cattle  grazing, 
or  to  the  breeding  of  sheep,  in  order  to  supply 


I 


116 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR 


local  wants,  there  is  a  certain  waste  of  the  labor 
thus  diverted,  because  it  is  being  applied  with  less 
productive  efficiency  than  it  might  be.  But  our 
railroads,  our  steam  vessels,  our  canals,  and  our 
improved  rivers  have  diminished  that  waste  to  an 
enormous  extent  during  the  last  half  century,  and 
their  work  is  j  ust  fairly  begun.  The  wheat-raising, 
the  corn-planting  and  pork-fattening,  the  cattle 
grazing,  the  sheep  breeding,  the  dairy  farming, 
the  fruit  culture,  and  so  on,  are  being  districted 
with  the  nicest  discrimination — with  the  closest 
adaptation  of  the  product  to  climate,  soil  and  every 
other  influential  condition — and  the  area  of  dis¬ 
tributed  division  is  becoming  every  year  more  and 
more  continental.  You  will  readily  see  that  this 
cannot  occur  without  a  very  great  augmentation  of 
the  total  product,  proportionately  to  the  labor  ex¬ 
pended,  even  allowing  for  the  auxiliary  labor  by 
which  such  wider  exchanges  are  carried  on.  The 
same  agency,  moreover,  is  putting  a  stop  to  the 
waste  of  a  localized  surplus  of  product,  which  used 
to  be  common  and  extensive — as  when,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  the  farmers  of  the  West  burned  for  fuel  the 
corn  which  they  could  carry  to  no  market. 

“Looking  over  the  whole  field,  at  all  the  im¬ 
proved  conditions  of  agricultural  production,  I 
cannot  doubt  that  the  efficiency  of  labor  in  it  has 
been  increased  at  least  fourfold,  since  no  longer 
ago  than  last  century,  in  the  better  civilized  coun- 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


117 


tries  of  the  world.  That  is  to  say, 'that,  for  the 
same  total  agricultural  product,  not  less  than  four 
times  as  many  laboring  hands  as  are  employed 
in  these  countries  to-day  would  have  had  to  be 
employed  one  hundred  years  ago.  Every  succes¬ 
sive  census  shows  a  relative  thinning  out  of  popu¬ 
lation  in  the  rural  districts,  wherever  these  im¬ 
provements  are  in  progress,  and  some  social  phi¬ 
losophers  are  inspired  with  great  alarm  by  the 
increasing  tendency  of  movement  in  the  younger 
generations  of  the  farm-bred  class  to  £  crowd/  as 
they  say,  into  cities  and  towns.  They  fail  to  see 
that  it  is  an  inevitable  movement,  pushed  on  by 
the  irresistible  forces  that  are  at  work  in  society ; 
because  it  has  become  impossible  to  employ  on  the 
soil  the  same  proportion  of  laborers  in  one  genera¬ 
tion  that  was  employed  the  generation  before,  and 
each  succeeding  generation  finds  the  proportion 
considerably  reduced. 

“  Do  you  think  that  my  estimate  is  too  large  ?  ” 

I  said  that  it  seemed  more  likely  to  be  under 
than  above  the  fact. 

“■"Well,  then,”  proceeded  the  judge,  u  let  us 
sum  our  conclusions  up.  In  the  matter  of  the 
constructive  production  of  man’s  clothing,  we  es¬ 
timated  that  the  increase  of  product  from  given 
quantities  of  human  labor,  as  compared  with  the 
production  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  has  become 
equal  to  a  multiplication  by  ten.  We  estimated  a 


118 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


multiplication  by  five  in  tlie  case  of  labor  which 
produces  shelter  for  him,  averaging  together  all 
the  various  kinds  of  workmanship  that  are  inci¬ 
dent  to  the  building,  fitting  and  furnishing  of  his 
habitations  and  his  houses  of  business  and  pleas¬ 
ure.  And,  finally,  we  have  estimated  a  multiplica¬ 
tion  by  four  in  the  case  of  the  labor  that  expends 
itself  in  the  production  of  his  food,  and  of  such 
materials  derived  from  the  soil  as  constructive 
labor  is  employed  upon.  Now,  I  am  sure  that  we 
are  not  overstepping  the  limit  of  probability  if  we 
take  the  mean  multiple  of  these  three  to  represent 
the  general  average  increment,  within  a  century, 
of  the  productiveness  of  all  labor  that  is  applied  to 
material  objects,  in  those  countries,  of  Europe  and 
America,  which  are  most  advanced  in  the  arts  and 
the  knowledge  of  our  modern  civilization.  It 
seems  to  me  certain  that  the  labor  which  is  pro¬ 
ductively  employed  in  these  countries  to-day,  put¬ 
ting  it  all  together,  is  producing  at  least  six  times 
as  much  as  the  same  number  of  laborers  could  have 
produced  a  hundred  years  ago;  or,*  to  state  the  fact 
differently,  that  only  one  man  need  work  now 
where  six  worked  a  hundred  years  ago  to  produce 
the  same  supply  for  the  satisfaction  of  human 
wants  to  the  same  extent.  If  the  six  do  still 
work,  as  they  certainly  do,  the  multiplication  of 
product,  proportionately  to  the  increase  of  popula¬ 
tion,  is  enormous;  and  if  this  multiplication  is  going 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


119 


on  at  the  same  rate,  as  it  appears  likely  to  do,  there 
would  seem  to  be  even  a  possibility  of  surfeiting, 
by-and-by,  all  rational  wants  and  desires  of  the 
animal  man,  unless  some  new  rules  for  the  divi¬ 
sion  of  the  increased  product  are  introduced.” 

I  shook  my  head. 

“  Well,  no  matter,”  said  the  judge.  “Let  that 
be  an  open  question.  I  do  not  care  about  it.  I 
only  care  to  claim  that  there  is  furnished  to  the 
race  at  large,  by  this  vast  increase  of  an  always 
increasing  production,  enough  to  improve  very 
considerably  the  conditions  of  life  for  every  man 
who  industriously  contributes  toward  it,  without 
interfering  at  all  wTith  the  just  inequalities  of 
wealth,  or  impairing  at  all  the  effective  uses  of 
wealth,  or  diminishing  at  all  the  effective  induce¬ 
ments  to  its  accumulation.  I  am  sure  that  you 
will  agree  with  me  in  this  ?  ” 

I  nodded  assent  and  he  went  on. 

“  But  how  much  have  the  conditions  of  life 
been  improved  for  the  ordinary  laborer,  or  for  the 
average  mechanic  who  works  for  wages,  and  who 
works  hard,  with  no  little  intelligence  and  with  no 
small  measure  of  the  knowledge  of  the  age  in  his 
education  ?  IIow  much  does  he  partake  of  the  stu¬ 
pendous  increase  of  the  fruits  of  labor  ?  I  know 
that  he  is  a  partaker; — the  poorest  beggar,  almost, 
partakes  somewhat  of  the  bettered  conditions  of 
life ;  but  do  you  think  that,  for  the  wages-paid 


120 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


mechanic  of  to-day,  there  is  an  augmented  share  of 
comfort  and  culture  and  gratification  at  all  equal 
to  the  productive  gain,  of  his  generation.  A  few 
simple  luxuries  have  been  added  to  his  food ;  but 
it  is  no  better,  on  the  whole,  nor  supplied  to  him 
more  abundantly,  than  it  was  three  hundred  years 
ago  in  England,  according  to  Froude,  when  beef 
sold  for  two  farthings  a  pound,  a  fat  lamb  for  a 
shilling,  a  chicken  for  a  penny,  and  wages  were 
from  fourpence  to  sixpence  a  day.  Ilis  house 
has  gained  windows  of  glass;  a  chimney  to  dis¬ 
charge  its  smoke;  a  stove  or  two  to  equalize  its 
comfortable  warmth ;  some  cheap  carpeting  in 
place  of  straw  upon  the  floors ;  softer  beds,  per¬ 
haps,  and  varnished  chairs,  instead  of  benches  of 
rough-hewn  deal.  lie  eats  from  dishes  of  a  neater 
pattern  than  the  wooden  trenchers  of  olden  times, 
and  he  has  forks  and  knives  to  eat  with  in  a  decent 
way.  lie  has  a  cheerfuller  light  in  his  dwelling 
than  the  rush-light  or  the  tallow  dip  could  give. 
Ilis  clothing  is  better  fashioned  and  cleaner  that  it 
used  to  be.  In  body  he  is  made  very  comfortable, 
no  doubt,  although  he  enjoys  but  sparingly  the 
conveniences  of  life  which  our  later  times  have 
been  fertile  in  producing.  Books  are  brought 
within  his  reach,  by  public  libraries  and  other¬ 
wise — if  he  has  time  to  read  them.  lie  may 
travel,  too,  at  greatly  lessened  cost,  to  see  some¬ 
thing  of  the  world,  and  he  may  gratify  all  his  cu- 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


121 


rious  and  inquiring  and  aesthetic  desires  at  less  cost 
than  he  formerly  could — if  he  has  time.  But  he 
is  compelled  to  labor  just  about  as  hard  and  just 
about  as  continuously  to  secure  the  bodily  main¬ 
tenance  and  comfort  of  himself  and  his  family  as 
the  laborer  did  two  or  three  hundred  years  ago. 
So  the  greater  part  of  his  share  of  the  improved 
conditions  of  life,  after  all,  is  just  in  that  improve¬ 
ment  of  bodily  comfort,  which  does  not  seem  to 
be  very  great.  Is  it  enough  to  fairly  account  to 
him  for  the  productive  progress  of  the  human  race 
in  the  last  three  centuries  ?  I  cannot  think  so.  I 
cannot  make  myself  feel  satisfied  with  it. 

“  The  whole  sum  total  of  things  which  really 
contribute  in  any  immediate  way  to  the  mere 
maintenance  and  bodily  comfort  of  the  race  is  pro¬ 
duced,  we  must  remember,  by  a  fraction  only  of 
the  labor  of  the  present  day.  There  has  not  been 
a  single  generation,  in  the  civilized  countries,  for 
two  hundred  years  past,  at  least,  which  directed 
over  half  its  labor  to  that  end,  and  we  certainly 
have  disengaged  more  than  half  of  the  labor  of  our 
time  from  those  objects  of  production  which  gratify 
bodily  wants,  whether  simple  or  luxurious.  Even 
the  highest  degree  of  animal  comfort,  therefore, 
seems  but  a  paltry  pittance  to  give  to  any  indus¬ 
trious  producer,  out  of  the  abundance  of  the  age. 
Yet  less  than  that  is  falling  to  the  lot,  to-day,  of 
an  actual  majority  of  the  toiling  men  and  women 
6 


122  TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 

wliose  work  lias  filled  the  world  so  full  of  riches 
that  they  run  to  waste.  Is  this,  do  you  think,  a 
necessary  state  of  things  ?  Is  it  a  state  of  things 
to  be  satisfied  with  ? 

“  I  have  spoken  of  riches  that  run  to  waste  out 
of  the  abundance  to  which  the  world  has  attained. 
You  touched  upon  that  point  a  little  while  ago,  but 
I  did  not  think  we  were  ready  then  to  consider  it. 
We  could  not  rightly  estimate  the  wastefulness  of 
consumption  until  we  had  formed  some  idea  of 
the  increase  of  production,  as  we  have  since  done. 
Let  us  now  go  back  to  it.  You  thought,  you  said, 
that  profligate  and  wasteful  consumption,  on  the 
part  of  those  who  are  able  to  command  possession 
of  the  products  of  labor,  cannot  be  restrained.  I 
do  not  quite  agree  with  you.  Can  you  tell  me 
what  wasteful  consumption  is  ?  ” 

I  scratched  my  head  and  confessed  that  I  did 
not  see  how  it  could  be  defined  with  any  precision 
at  all.  “And  that,”  1  added,  “  constitutes  just 
the  difficulty  in  the  matter  which  I  was  setting  be¬ 
fore  you.” 

“  It  is  a  difficulty,”  returned  the  judge,  “and 
I  certainly  would  not  undertake  to  draw  a  com¬ 
plete  line  between  wasteful  and  unwasteful  con¬ 
sumption.  It  cannot  possibly  be  done.  But  I 
have  at  least  one  very  well  defined  notion  on  the 
subject.  Let  us  rid  ourselves,  first,  of  the  con¬ 
fusion  which  the  idea  of  “  profligacy  ”  introduces. 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


123 


Profligate  consumption  is  not  necessarily  waste¬ 
ful  consumption,  in  tlie  economical  sense.  Profli¬ 
gacy  is  a  word  of  shifting  signification.  It  means 
differently  to  different  persons  and  under  differ¬ 
ent  circumstances.  That  which  seems  profligate 
to  one  is  not  profligate  to  another,  and  it  was  this 
fact,  I  think,  which  you  had  mostly  in  mind,  when 
you  questioned  the  possibility  of  bringing  the  con¬ 
sumption  of  the  products  of  labor  under  any  con¬ 
trolling  laws.  But  there  is  one  broad  law  that 
can  be  laid  down  and  which  is  sufficient,  in  the 
economical  view,  to  cover  the  whole  ground.  It 
is  this  :  that  nothing  can  be  said  to  be  wasted 
which  contributes  to  the  gratifying  or  the  satisfy¬ 
ing  of  any  taste  or  any  want  in  man,  whether  nat¬ 
ural  or  cultivated.  From  the  moral  standpoint 
this  looks  like  a  startlingly  broad  rule,  but  I  am 
convinced  that  it  represents  the  only  view  which 
political  economy  can  take.  We  can  make  no  dis¬ 
tinction  between  true  tastes  and  false  tastes,  or 
between  vicious  desires  and  virtuous  ones,  because 
we  cannot  agree  about  them.  We  can  take  ac¬ 
count  of  no  wastefulness  in  any  consumption  of 
labor  which  has  distinctly  an  object  in  any  human 
taste  or  human  want.  There  is  wastefulness,  to 
be  sure,  because  everything  expended  upon  an  un¬ 
worthy  object,  or  expended  disproportionately  to 
the  importance  of  the  object,  is  wasted ;  but  we 
simply  cannot  take  account  of  it. 


124 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


“  Where,  then,  is  the  waste  that  we  can  take 
account  of  ?  I  will  tell  you.  It  is  in  the  consump¬ 
tion  of  wealth  which  has  no  object  outside  of  it¬ 
self.  It  is  in  that  consumption  of  labor  and  of  the 
products  of  labor  which  is  for  the  sake  of  con¬ 
sumption  only;  which  is  for  the  sake,  in  other 
words,  of  displaying  the  ability  to  consume  and 
which  consumes  objectlessly  for  that  purpose.  It 
is  that  which  we  call  the  ostentation  of  wealth,  or 
of  the  power  of  consumption  which  wealth  gives. 
This  is  the  great  robber  of  society.  It  steals  more 
out  of  what  belongs  to  the  race  at  large,  for  the 
comforting  and  beautifying  and  enlarging  of  hu¬ 
man  life,  than  all  the  robber  appetites  and  passions 
and  vices  put  together.  It  is  appalling  to  think  of 
the  extent  to  which  it  recklessly  and  with  brutal 
insensateness  destroys  the  common  benefit  that 
ought  to  accrue  to  mankind  from  the  great  inven¬ 
tions  by  which  the  fruitfulness  of  labor  is  mul¬ 
tiplied.  Look  at  one  instance  out  of  hundreds, 
which  our  lady-friends  here  can  appreciate.  The 
sewing-machine  made  it  possible  to  cheapen  enor¬ 
mously  the  construction  of  clothing  and  to  set  free 
from  that  work  a  vast  quantity  of  labor  for  other 
fields  of  production,  tributary  to  the  conven¬ 
iences  of  living,  or  to  the  sense  of  beauty,  or  to 
the  desire  for  knowledge.  Has  it  realized  such  a 
result,  in  any  degree  commensurate  at  all  with 
what  it  added  to  the  efficiency  of  labor  in  the 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


125 


employment  of  sewing  ?  No.  And'  why  ?  Be¬ 
cause  a  despicable,  senseless,  and  most  vulgar  van¬ 
ity  in  that  minor  fraction  of  mankind  which  has 
the  power,  more  or  less,  to  command  labor  at  will, 
refuses  to  let  clothing  be  cheapened,  and  persists 
in  the  contemptible  display  of  an  ability  to  possess 
and  to  wear  clothes  which  cost  much  labor.  So 
the  4  world  of  fashion,’  as  we  call  it,  exerts  a  per¬ 
verted  ingenuity  in  contriving  forms  of  construc¬ 
tion  and  frivolous  changes  in  dress  which  shall 
constantly  use  up,  and  more  than  use  up,  if  possi¬ 
ble,  all  the  gain  to  labor  that  is  derived  from  me¬ 
chanical  invention.  With  what  object  ?  To  im¬ 
prove  our  dress  in  durability  or  comfortableness  ? 
No.  To  add  any  quality  of  beauty,  or  graceful¬ 
ness,  or  picturesqueness  ?  No.  To  satisfy  any  de¬ 
mand  from  any  kind  of  taste,  whether  pure  and 
artistic  or  false  1  No.  If  these  objects  are  thought 
of  at  all,  they  are  the  last  and  the  least  things  con¬ 
sidered  in  the  edicts  of  fashion,  to  which  a  sur¬ 
viving  barbarism  in  society  is  servile.  It  is  a  case 
of  consumption,  for  the  most  part,  with  no  object ; 
of  consumption  for  the  sake  of  consuming,  alone  ; 
of  consumption  to  ostentate  the  power  to  consume. 
Am  I  not  right  V9 

“  You  are,”  said  my  wife,  “  ‘  ’tis  true,  and  pity 
’tis  ’tis  true.’  ” 

“  The  same  is  true,”  continued  the  judge,  “  of 
consumption  in  many  other  ways,  to  a  monstrous 


126 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


extent.  I  think  sometimes  that  almost  half  of 
what  is  expended  among  wealthy  people  upon 
their  houses  and  the  appurtenances  of  their  living 
is  expended  only  to  measure  against  one  another 
the  expending  power  which  they  severally  possess. 
There  is  not  a  desire,  nor  a  taste,  nor  a  sentiment, 
nor  an  emotion,  nor  even  an  animal  sensation  of 
the  lowest  kind,  which  prompts  it  or  is  gratified 
by  it.  It  is  simply  an  objectless  consumption. 

“  Now,  all  this  is  barbaric  and  vulgar.  It  is  of 
the  essence  of  vulgarity.  It  is  opposed  to  all  the 
influences  under  which  human  character  is  being 
developed  in  the  process  of  what  we  call  civiliza¬ 
tion.  It  is  offensive,  as  much  to  the  practical  com¬ 
mon-sense,  and  to  the  bare,  bald,  calculating  utili¬ 
tarianism  of  habit,  which  grow  with  the  growth  of 
intelligence  and  faculty,  as  it  is  offensive  to  the 
finer  instincts  and  perceptions  that  grow  in  the 
same  process.  Will  you  tell  me  that  there  is  no 
hope  of  the  evolution  of  a  state  of  sentiment  in 
society  which  will  put  checks  upon  this  objectless, 
ostentatious  consumption,  by  holding  it  in  derision 
and  contempt,  thus  destroying  the  one  small,  mean 
motive  behind  it-and  making  it  abortive  ?  I  believe 
differently.  I  know  that  there  is  a  quicker  sen¬ 
sitiveness  in  mankind  to  imputations  of  vulgarity 
than  to  imputations  of  immorality.  I  know  that 
it  is  easier  to  attach  social  disgrace  to  the  doings 
of  things  which  impugn  the  polite  culture  of  men 


FOTJRTR  EVENING. 


127  - 


than  to  the  doing  of  things  which  -impugn  their 
virtue  or  their  honesty.  I  know,  therefore,  that 
the  poverty  of  taste,  the  poverty  of  resource,  the 
poverty  of  capacity  for  enjoyment,  which  exhibit 
themselves  in  an  aimless,  ostentatious  consump¬ 
tion  of  wealth,  will  become  contemptible  and  ridic¬ 
ulous  in  our  society  long  before  the  vices  of  ap¬ 
petite  and  taste  which  consume  wealth  unworthily 
and  sinfully  are  disgraced  and  condemned.  I  have 
hope  of  seeing,  even  before  my  days  are  ended, 
the  coming  of  the  time  when  a  great  house,  built 
for  no  uses  of  hospitality — a  great  house  of  closed 
chambers — a  great  house  full  of  splendors  out  of 
which  the  possessor  enjoys  nothing  except  the 
poor  consciousness  of  possession — will  be  looked 
upon  as  the  monument  of  a  barbarian  who  has 
survived  beyond  his  age.  Yet  I  have  no  hope  of 
seeing  in  my  time  the  extermination  of  immoral 
profligacy.  Such  is  the  difference  of  controllabil¬ 
ity,  in  my  view,  between  the  two  kinds  of  wasteful 
consumption. 

“  And  it  ought  to  be  so.  Any  robust,  positive 
vice,  out  of  which  grow  evil  appetites  and  perni¬ 
cious  desires,  is  more  tolerable  than  the  nothingness 
of  ostentation,  as  a  consumer  of  the  wealth  of  the 
world.  I  would  have  this  preached  as  the  gospel 
of  social  economy,  until  society  is  taught  to  exact 
from  its  members  some  account  of  their  consump¬ 
tion  of  the  products  of  its  labor ;  whether  morally 


128 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


satisfactory  or  not — whether  aesthetically  satisfac¬ 
tory  or  not — whether  sensually  satisfactory  or  not ; 
exacting,  simply,  that  there  shall  be  objects  of  de¬ 
sire  of  some  kind  to  account  for  their  consump¬ 
tion.  The  world  needs  nothing  nearer  to  com¬ 
munism  than  that.  It  has  enough  to  afford  to 
every  man  the  gratification  of  all  wants,  all  desires, 
and  all  tastes,  that  he  can  make  himself  capable  of 
deriving  enjoyment  from,  either  by  cultivation  or 
by  vitiation — no  matter  what  their  nature  or  their 
extravagance  may  he — if  he  will  oidy  make  these 
the  measure  of  his  consumption  and  not  consume 
aimlessly  and  wantonly  beyond  them.” 

The  judge  paused,  and  I  said  to  him  :  “  What 
then?  You  have  satisfied  me  that  there  may  be 
some  restraint  put  upon  the  wanton  waste  of 
wealth  in  ostentatious  consumption,  by  vulgarizing 
it  in  public  opinion;  but  what  then?  You  will 
only  have  changed  the  direction  of  expenditure, 
and  stimulated  the  cultivation  of  wants  and  de¬ 
sires  to  absorb  that  which  was  consumed  without 
desire  before.” 

“  Xot  so,”  he  replied.  “In  the  nature  and  in 
the  cultivation  of  every  man  there  are  limits  to  the 
consumption  of  wealth  which  can  yield  enjoyment 
to  him,  if  you  suppress  ostentation,  or  that  which 
the  keen  perceptions  of  his  fellows  will  detect  as 
pretension  and  ostentation.  And  this  is  especially 
true  of  those  men  who  make  the  acquisition  of 


FOURTH  EVENING. 


129 


wealth  an  end  in  life.  They  leave  themselves  lit¬ 
tle  time  for  the  cultivation  of  large  tastes,  large 
desires  or  large  capacities  for  personal  enjoyment 
of  any  kind.  Not  only  that,  but  the  natural  tastes 
and  desires  in  them  lose  their  edge.  There  is  one 
passion  only  in  them  that  can  make  boundless  de¬ 
mands  upon  wealth  for  its  gratification,  and  that  is 
the  love  of  power.  But  wealth  yields  power  to  the 
possessor  of  it  within  limits  that  are  very  narrow 
if  it  is  not  productively  used,  as  by  the  Rothschilds 
and  the  Vanderbilts,  instead  of  being  wastefully 
consumed.  As  you  discourage  among  men,  there¬ 
fore,  the  vain  showing  of  wealth,  by  making  that 
vulgar  and  despicable,  you  drive  them  into  finding 
potent  uses  for  it,  and  thus  you  throw  a  vast  part 
of  what  had  been  wastefully  consumed,  by  bar¬ 
baric  ostentation,  into  the  fund  of  productive  capi¬ 
tal.  Is  not  that  so  ?  ” 

I  was  forced  to  assent. 

“  We  have  gone  far  enough,  then,  for  to-night,” 
said  the  judge.  “  We  set  out  to  discover  how,  and 
from  what  sources,  the  fund  of  capital  is  suscep¬ 
tible  of  an  increase  that  will  enlarge  the  dividends 
to  productive  labor,  without  disturbing  the  social 
organization  in  which  wealth  is  unequally  dis¬ 
tributed,  and  without  impairing  the  inducements 
to  the  accumulation  of  wealth.  I  think  that  I 
have  partly,  though  not  wholly  yet,  answered  your 
questions  on  this  point.  W e  have  seen  what  room 


130 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


for  such  an  increase  is  made  by  mechanical  multi¬ 
plications  of  the  productiveness  of  labor,  and  by 
the  relative  diminution  of  animals  which  compete 
with  man  for  subsistence  from  the  earth,  and  you 
have  agreed  with  me  that  it  is  possible- to  cultivate 
a  state  of  feeling  in  society  which  will  restrain 
that  kind  of  unproductive  consumption  that  wastes 
wealth  in  the  empty  ostentation  of  it.  Let  us 
leave  the  matter  here  till  to-morrow  evening,  and 
then  we  will  take  up  the  ‘  wages-fund J  in  the 
light  of  these  facts.” 

So  we  parted  for  the  night. 


FIFTH  EYEHIHG. 


ABOUT  THE  WAYS  AND  MEANS  OF  JUSTICE. 

The  “Wages -Fund”  and  the  Wages  System.  —  The  Common 
“Compensation  Fund”  which  may  be  substituted  in  Political 
Economy. — Effects  of  Partnership  between  Labor  and  Capi¬ 
tal. —  Its  Practicable  Beginnings  and  its  Ultimate  Conse¬ 
quences. — Loanable  Capital  and  Public  Debts. — The  Judge’s 
New  Party. — Malthus  and  the  Far  Future. 

“How,”  said  tlie  judge,  when  we  were  seated 
together  again,  “  let  ns  try,  if  we  can,  to  reach  the 
end  of  our  discussion  to-night,  for  I  am  afraid  that 
it  is  growing  tiresome.  We  have  got  the  way 
pretty  well  cleared  before  us,  and  ought  to  go  over 
the  remaining  ground  more  rapidly. 

“  I  do  not  pretend,  you  understand,  to  have  the 
solution  of  this  great  labor-question  formulated  in 
any  social  theory.  I  do  not  pretend  to  lay  down 
a  scheme  of  doctrine  for  any  school  or  any  party 
of  social  reform.  I  am  only  trying  to  discover  the 
facts  which  underlie  the  problem  and  the  princi¬ 
ples  which  bear  upon  it,  and  to  contribute,  if  I 
can,  some  help  toward  opening  it  to  proper  study. 


132 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


I  know  that  it  is  not  a  subject  for  legislation,  either 
in  parliaments  or  in  parties,  nor  a  thing  to  be  ar¬ 
bitrarily  dealt  with  in  any  way.  There  are  no 
solvents  for  it  unless  we  can  find  them  in  public 
opinion,  and  my  hope  is  in  the  appeal  to  that.  I 
want  to  see  given  to  the  question  the  moral  aspects 
which  belong  to  it,  along  with  the  economical 
ones,  holding  the  two  together  so  that  their  modi¬ 
fication  of  one  another  may  be  seen.  It  has  been 
looked  at  too  long  from  the  opposite  standpoints 
of  the  philanthropist  and  the  political  economist. 
I  would  like,  if  I  can,  to  study  it  with  the  eyes  of 
both  ;  to  clearly  take  in  the  hard  environment  of 
view  to  which  political  economy  is  restricted,  and 
yet  to  do  so  without  standing  quite  down  at  the 
level  of  dead  facts,  but  lifted  just  so  far  into  the 
region  of  sentiment  that  I  may  possibly  see  some¬ 
thing  behind  and  beyond,  and  find  if  there  are 
moral  forces  lying  latent  there  which  may  be  ca¬ 
pable  of  ameliorating  that  environment  of  hard 
conditions. 

“  I  am  convinced  that  there  are  such  forces, 
and  that  they  may  be  brought  into  gradual  activity 
by  a  steady  propagation  of  just  notions  in  society 
concerning  labor  and  capital,  and  concerning  the 
acquisition  and  consumption  and  use  of  wealth. 
Xot  in  the  spirit  of  ranting  demagoguism,  nor 
of  fanatical,  unreasoning  philanthropy,  so  called, 
but  in  the  spirit  of  rational  justice  and  of  that  prac- 


133 


FIFTH  EVENING. 

tical,  every-day  common-sense  in  mankind  which  is 
becoming  all-powerful. 

“  The  doctrine  of  the  £  wages-f  und  ’  in  political 
economy  rests  solidly  upon  stubborn  facts.  But 
let  us  look  at  the  nature  of  the  facts.  ‘  Wages,’ 
says  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill,  ‘  not  only  depend  upon 
the  relative  amount  of  capital  and  population,  but 
cannot,  under  the  rule  of  competition,  be  affected 
by  anything  else.  AY  ages  (meaning,  of  course,  the 
general  rate)  cannot  rise  but  by  an  increase  of  the 
aggregate  funds  employed  in  hiring  laborers,  or  a 
diminution  in  the  number  of  competitors  for  hire ; 
nor  fall  except  either  by  a  diminution  of  the  funds 
devoted  to  paying  labor,  or  by  an  increase  of  the 
number  of  laborers  to  be  paid.’  Now,  this  is  true 
— unquestionably  true.  But  wThat  then  ?  AYe  are 
not  compelled  to  assume,  as  the  political  econo¬ 
mists  incline  to  do,  that  there  is  no  possibility  of 
forcing  a  relative  increase  of  the  aggregate  funds 
employed  in  production.  AYe  might  have  to  as¬ 
sume  that,  if  we  could  find  no  sources  from  which 
to  derive  such  an  increase  of  the  fund  of  capital, 
without  interfering  with  the  ordinary  springs  and 
motives  of  human  action.  If  it  could  not  be  had 
without  curtailing  the  gratification  of  wants  and 
desires  and  tastes,  on  the  part  of  those  who  com¬ 
mand  at  will  the  consumption  of  labor  and  its 
products,  we  could  not  reasonably  argue  upon  any 
other  assumption.  But  we  have  found  differently. 


134 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


We  have  found  that  the  augmented  productiveness 
of  labor,  since  mechanical  invention  became  ac¬ 
tive,  actually  outruns  the  desires  of  that  minority 
in  society  which  has  so  far  monopolized  most  of 
the  benefit  from  it,  and  that  there  is  a  sickening 
wastefulness  of  consumption  without  object  going 
on,  which  is  plainly  susceptible  of  being  restrained 
by  the  influences  that  are  developed  in  the  prog¬ 
ress  of  human  culture.  In  contemplating  these 
influences  as  available  forces  in  social  economy 
we  contemplate  no  opposition  to  human  nature, 
but  are  strictly  in  consonance  with  it.  We  have 
a  right  then,  I  say,  to  assume  that  some  relative 
increment  of  the  aggregate  fund  of  wealth  appro¬ 
priated  to  productive  labor  is  possible,  and  we 
have  no  right  to  assume  the  contrary. 

“  Now  comes  the  question, ‘  How  can  constraint 
be  brought  upon  those  who  hold  possession  of 
wealth,  to  compel  them  to  add  more  of  it  year  by 
year  to  the  capital-fund,  instead  of  consuming  it  \  ’ 
Well,  it  cannot  be  done  under  the  existing  4  wages 
system.’  The  political  economists  are  right  in 
that.  So  long  as  the  pay  of  the  working-man  con¬ 
tinues  to  be  a  fixed  quantity,  it  will  continue  to 
be  very  near  the  lowest  quantity  at  which  equi¬ 
librium  is  established  between  his  necessities  and 
the  gainful  desires  of  the  man  of  wealth  who  em¬ 
ploys  him.  So  long  as  the  capitalists  think  it  right 
to  hold  and  use  their  dictatorial  power  in  produc- 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


135 


tion,  and  the  working-man  is  nothing  more  than 
one  troublesome  factor  out  of  several  in  their  pro¬ 
ductive  calculations,  it  is  certain  that  the  figures 
which  represent  him  in  the  calculation  are  not 
likely  to  change  much  in  his  favor.  The  x  which 
stands  for  quantity  of  capital  to  be  appropriated 
to  production  will  bear  a  pretty  constant  ratio  to 
the  y  which  stands  for  quantity  of  dependent 
labor,  divided  by  the  s  which  represents  the  degree 
to  which  it  is  dependent.  But  change  the  rela¬ 
tionship  of  the  laborer  to  the  capitalist,  from  that 
of  hire  to  that  of  partnership — no  matter  by  how 
slight  an  alteration — and  see  how  the  formula  of 
the  calculation  is  changed !  lie  escapes  at  once 
from  under  the  rule-of-three  by  which  you  settled 
wages  for  him.  He  is  no  longer  a  factor  in  the 
simple  division  of  your  ‘  wages-fund ; 5  you  have 
to  reckon  him  now  among  the  primary  factors  in 
the  general  division  of  the  general  product  of 
labor.  He  has  acquired  what  he  did  not  have  be¬ 
fore — a  certain  proprietary  interest  in  the  aggre¬ 
gate  fund  of  produced  wealth,  and  has  to  be  ac¬ 
counted  to  for  his  interest  before  the  question,  as 
to  how  much  of  what  has  been  produced  this  year 
shall  be  dedicated  to  production  next  year,  becomes 
an  open  question  at  all.  He  has  acquired  his  suf¬ 
frage,  so  to  speak,  in  the  matter  of  the  allotment 
to  be  made  between  productive  and  unproductive 
consumption. 


136 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


aTTe  can  see  tliis  plainly  enough  in  an  indi¬ 
vidual  case,  and  can  see  with  what  effect  it  op¬ 
erates  to  modify  the  conditions  of  the  distribution 
of  the  products  of  labor  and  to  change  the  terms 
of  the  daily  or  yearly  appropriation  made  out  of 
them  to  the  capital  fund.  Here  is  our  young 
friend  John,  for  example,  receiving  wages,  I  be¬ 
lieve — or  a  salary,  if  that  sounds  better — from  his 
employers,  lie  is  paid  for  his  work  a  fixed  com¬ 
pensation,  which  is  chiefly  determined  by  the  ex¬ 
isting  demand  for,  and  supply  of,  such  services  as 
he  is  qualified  to  perform.  lie  draws  it  from 
what  Mr.  Mill  calls  ‘  the  fund  employed  in  hiring 
labor,’  and  there  are  limitations  put  upon  it  by  the 
limits  of  that  fund.  But  suppose  that  next  year 
his  employers,  who  think  highly  of  him  and  feel 
friendly  toward  him,  and  who  desire  to  attach  him 
permanently  in  interest  to  themselves,  admit  him 
to  a  junior  partnership  in  the  concern,  turning 
over  to  him  a  certain  minor  share  of  their  property 
and  business,  which  he  is  to  pay  for,  perhaps,  out 
of  the  earnings.  lie  will  have  ceased  then,  will 
he  not,  to  draw  his  remuneration  for  work  out  of 
the  1  wages-fund  ?  ’  lie  will  have  ceased  to  par¬ 
ticipate  in  that  drawing  of  fixed  shares  from  the 
aggregate  product  of  labor  which  we  call  wages- 
paying,  and  will  have  become  a  participant  in  the 
division  of  that  indefinite  remainder  out  of  which 
the  appropriations  to  capital  have  chiefly  to  be 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


137 


made.  He  will  have  become,  therefore,  an  abso¬ 
lute  instead  of  a  relative  factor  in  the  division  of 
the  product.  He  will  have  been  lifted  out  of  de¬ 
pendence  upon  the  ‘  wages-fund,’  into  a  relation¬ 
ship  toward  the  whole  fund  of  produced  wealth 
which  is  potentially  independent ;  and  that  will 
have  been  a  great  gain  for  Master  John,  even 
though  his  dividends  from  the  earnings  of  the 
business  should  be  no  greater  than  his  wages  are 
now. 

“  He  will  have  owed  it,  too,  to  a  generous  con¬ 
cession  on  the  part  of  his  employers ;  that  is,  if  he 
has  no  capital  to  put  into  their  business  equivalent 
to  the  partnership  in  it  which  they  concede  to  him. 
Ho  doubt  they  will  have  been  actuated  by  consid¬ 
erable  motives  of  self-interest  in  the  matter.  Ho 
doubt  they  will  have  expected  to  gain  some  relief 
from  care  and  exertion  for  themselves,  and  to  gain 
some  energy  in  the  prosecution  and  management 
of  their  business,  by  infusing  young  blood  into 
the  proprietorship.  But  still  there  will  have  been 
a  strong  element  of  magnanimity  in  the  conces¬ 
sion.  They  are  under  no  necessity  to  make  it,  and 
if  they  are  men  of  mean  selfishness  they  will  not 
make  it.  They  will  try,  on  the  contrary,  to  retain 
John’s  services  under  hire  as  long  as  they  can,  and 
then,  when  he  will  work  for  wages  no  longer,  to 
find  some  one  else  of  like  capacity  and  fidelity,  but 
more  dependent  than  he,  to  take  his  place.  They 


138 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


prefer,  however,  as  we  suppose,  to  unite  John  per¬ 
manently  in  interest  with  themselves,  and  it  is 
with  motives  partly  selfish  and  partly  generous 
that  they  open  the  door  for  him  through  which 
he  steps  to  the  more  independent  footing  of  a  pro¬ 
prietary  producer,  and  passes  at  once  outside  of 
the  domain  of  your  inexorable  law  of  the  ‘  wages- 
fund,’  because  he  becomes  then  one  of  the  admin¬ 
istrators  of  the  law. 

“Now,  suppose  that  these  same  employers 
should  he  further  induced  by  like  considerations 
to  make  the  same  kind  of  concession,  in  some 
small  way,  to  every  other  man  in  their  employ, 
turning  over  to  him,  on  the  same  terms,  some  lit¬ 
tle  share  of  interest  in  their  establishment — no 
matter  how  little — or  supplementing  his  wages  by 
some  slight  fraction  of  dividend  from  the  profits 
of  the  business — no  matter  how  slight;  would 
they  not,  then,  have  done  for  him,  proportion¬ 
ately,  the  same  thing  which  they  had  done  for 
Master  John,  and  made  the  like  change  in  his  re¬ 
lations  to  production  and  capital  ?  Would  they 
not,  to  that  extent,  have  abrogated  in  their  estab¬ 
lishment  the  law  of  the  ‘  wages-fund,’  and  intro¬ 
duced  another  law,  to  which  the  appropriations 
made  from  production  to  capital  would  have  to 
conform  to  themselves  ? 

“  And,  then,  suppose  that  all  the  employers  in 
the  country  should  be  induced  to  do  the  same 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


139 


tiling !  Wliat  would  have  happened  ?  Why,  your 
4  wages-fund  ’  would  have  disappeared  out  of  the 
calculations  of  political  economy,  because  it  would 
have  ceased  to  be  a  definable  fund.  -  We  could  as 
well  talk  of  a  ‘  profit-fund,’  and  there  is  certainly 
no  such  thing  as  that,  in  any  definable  sense ;  be¬ 
cause  the  profits  of  capital  are  simply  that  remain¬ 
der  of  the  product  of  labor  which  is  left  in  its 
possession,  after  giving  to  the  producing  laborers 
just  what  the  competition  of  their  necessities  will 
compel  them  to  accept.  In  the  case  supposed,  we 
should  have  merged  the  whole  together  in  one 
common  ‘  compensation-fund.’  With  what  result? 
Simply  this :  our  present  wages  system  establishes 
a  given  set  of  conditions,  to  which  production  has 
to  be  conformed,  and  there  is  reserved  from  con¬ 
sumption  for  renewed  production  just  such  a  fund 
of  capital  as  those  conditions  exact.  If  we  intro¬ 
duced  the  new  set  of  conditions  which  the  system 
of  dividends  contemplates,  they  would  be  just  as 
arbitrary  and  compulsory ;  production  would  have 
to  be  adapted  to  them,  and  the  reserve  for  capital 
would  again  be  precisely  what  they  exact.  It 
could  not  be  otherwise.” 

“  But  that  involves,  does  it  not,”  said  I,  “  a  re¬ 
duction  of  the  profits  of  capital  corresponding  to 
the  addition  made  to  the  remuneration  of  labor  ?  ” 

“Ho,  not  a  corresponding  reduction,”  returned 
the  judge.  u  Ho  doubt  it  involves  some  encroach- 


140 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


merit  upon  the  general  rate  of  profit  which  capital 
now  enjoys  and  is  habituated  to  expect,  but  not  to 
the  extent  that  might  be  feared.  The  greater  part 
of  the  gain  to  the  working-man  will  ultimately  be 
an  absolute  and  clear  gain,  costing  the  capitalist 
nothing.  The  provision  for  it  will  be  found  in  an 
increase  of  product,  relatively  to  the  capital  em¬ 
ployed,  resulting  from  the  stimulation  of  labor  by 
more  animating  and  energetic  motives.  AVe  can 
certainly  calculate  upon  that,  and  largely,  because 
we  know  what  self-interest  is  worth  as  a  stimulant 
of  human  exertion.  The  most  conscientious  man 
is  incapable,  as  a  rule,  of  constantly  doing  quite 
his  best  in  work  when  the  personal  benefit  to  him¬ 
self  from  it  is  not  affected  by  small  differences  of 
industry  and  carefulness  and  watchful  attention, 
lie  may  try  to  exert  himself  for  another  with  the 
same  faithfulness  and  energy  and  zeal  that  he 
would  for  himself,  but  he  cannot  always  do  it. 
lie  is  betrayed  into  relaxations  of  spirit  which  he 
is  not  conscious  of.  Although  he  does  not  feel  it 
or  know  it,  there  is  the  want  in  him  of  one  elastic 
spring  of  action  that  would  keep  the  moral  mo¬ 
tives  of  his  work  at  a  steadier  tension.  It  is  the 
knowledge  of  this  fact  in  human  nature  that  chiefly 
induces  employers  of  labor  to  do  that  which  we 
supposed  in  the  case  of  our  young  friend  John. 
By  admitting  a  faithful  employe  into  partnership, 
or  by  holding  out  that  prospect  to  him,  they  cal- 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


141 


dilate  upon  enlisting  a  new  motor  in  liim  that  will 
reenforce  the  motives  of  conscience  and  add  energy^ 
to  his  whole  performance  of  service.  And  the  cal¬ 
culation  rarely  fails. 

“Now,  I  am  sure  that  the  same  effect  will  fol¬ 
low  the  widest  application  of  the  experiment. 
But  it  will  not  he  an  instantaneous  effect.  It  will 
follow  very  slowly,  perhaps,  and  the  experiment 
that  I  refer  to  cannot  be  otherwise  than  a  tentative 
and  gradual  one,  to  be  successful.  I  should  not 
dream  of  having  it  entered  upon  by  any  sudden 
and  universal  movement,  if  that  were  possible,  be¬ 
cause  I  know  that  it  would  fail.  I  have  said  al¬ 
ready  that  the  dependent  laboring-class,  as  a  body, 
needs  to  be  educated  for  it,  by  slow  and  careful 
beginnings  in  the  introduction  of  the  new  system. 
It  is  inevitable  that  much  of  the  introductory  ex¬ 
perimenting  will  be  abortive ;  but  that  offers  no 
discouragement,  if  we  convince  ourselves  that  the 
direction  taken  is  right.  My  wish  is  only  to  see  a 
movement  in  the  interest  of  the  laboring-people 
set  in  that  right  direction,  no  matter  how  slow  it 
may  be.  That  such  a  work  of  reform  must  begin 
with  a  work  of  education  on  the  part  of  those  who 
are  to  benefit  by  it,  we  can  readily  see.  One  of 
the  main  elements  of  the  force  to  be  generated  in 
labor,  by  setting  independent  personal  interests 
and  personal  prospects  before  it,  is  that  of  am¬ 
bition  or  aspiration.  But  there  are  a  great  many 


142 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


laborers,  of  the  duller  sort,  who  are  obviously  not 
capable  of  feeling  ambitious.  There  are  no  suffi¬ 
cient  aspirations  to  be  awakened  in  them.  There 
is  an  inheritance  in  them,  perhaps,  of  natures  blunt¬ 
ed  through  many  generations  by  hard  conditions 
of  life.  There  are  many  others  who  may  be  ca¬ 
pable  of  ambitious  sentiments,  but  who  are  not 
capable  of  the  provident  fore-calculation,  or  the 
postponement  of  desires  to  anticipations  and  the 
sacrifice  of  present  ease  for  future  enjoyment, 
which  effective  ambition  involves.  These  large 
classes  are  almost  hopelessly  doomed  to  the  con¬ 
ditions  of  the  present  labor  system.  It  will  be 
long  generations,  no  doubt,  before  they  can  be  ef¬ 
fectively  acted  upon  by  any  stimulant  of  opportu¬ 
nity  that  may  be  given  them.  But  it  is  needless, 
meantime,  that  all  the  rest  of  the  great  brother¬ 
hood  of  labor  should  be  doomed  by  the  incapacity 
of  these.  It  is  not  necessary  that  the  leaden  weight 
of  one  stolid  part  should  be  laid  on  the  whole  class 
to  hold  it  down.  Why  not  set  that  kind  of  a  sys¬ 
tem  on  foot  which  shall  sift  out  the  enterprising 
from  the  inert  and  distinguish  those  who  are  capa¬ 
ble  of  laying  hold  of  better  opportunities  in  life 
from  those  who  are  not?  Then  trust  that  emula¬ 
tion  and  example  and  encouragement  and  hope 
will  work  like  a  slow  leaven  through  the  whole 
heavy  mass. 

“  If  I  made  any  proposition  on  the  subject,  I 


FIFTH  EVE  FIX  a. 


113 


should  propose  that,  for  the  beginning  of  the  ex¬ 
periment  of  dividends  to  labor,  it  be  based  alto¬ 
gether  upon  the  expectation  of  an  increased  prod¬ 
uct,  relatively  to  capital  employed,  and  be  carried 
only  so  far  as  that  expectation  may  be  realized.  In 
other  words,  that  the  employers  of  labor  be  per¬ 
suaded  to  begin  to  say  to  their  employed  laborers 
this:  4 We  are  deriving,  now,  a  certain  rate  of 
profit — say  the  average  of  past  years — from  the 
business  in  which  our  capital,  our  exertions  in  man¬ 
agement,  and  your  labor,  are  engaged  together. 
This  is  the  compensation  which  seems  to  be  fix¬ 
ed  for  us  by  the  conditions  of  the  present  system 
of  simple  wages-paying.  We  are  accustomed  to  it, 
and  we  are  not  willing  either  to  exert  ourselves  or 
to  expose  our  capital  to  commercial  risks  for  less. 
But  if  you  will  make  the  rate  of  profit  greater,  by 
working  with  more  energy  and  more  efficiency ;  by 
using  our  tools,  our  materials,  and  our  capital  in 
general  more  economically,  and  by  giving  more 
careful  attention  to  all  the  interests  in  which  you 
are  concerned  with  us,  we  will  divide  the  whole 
increase  of  profit  so  produced  among  you,  pro¬ 
portionately,  as  near  as  may  be,  to  what  you  have 
severally  contributed  to  it.  We  will  take  to  our¬ 
selves,  in  other  words,  no  more  than  the  remuner¬ 
ation  that  we  have  been  accustomed  to,  and  all  be¬ 
yond  that  shall  be  yours.  We  will  pay  you  wages 
in  the  mean  time,  as  heretofore,  according  to 


144 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


the  market.  If  we  find  some  among  yon  who  are 
making  exertions  to  give  effect  to  this  proposition 
and  others  who  are  not,  we  shall  not  permit  the 
latter  to  steal  the  benefit  of  the  exertions  of  the 
former.  We  shall  get  rid  of  them  as  soon  as  pos¬ 
sible.  We  shall  try  to  find  men  to  take  their 
places  who  will  cooperate  wdth  their  fellows  and 
with  us  in  this  experiment,  or  else  we  shall  try,  in 
conjunction  with  the  better  workmen,  to  adjust  a 
scale  of  wages,  or  a  system  of  piece-work,  in  which 
the  relative  value  of  the  labor  of  each  workman 
shall  be  fairly  measured,  to  determine  his  §liare  of 
the  proposed  dividend.’ 

“  Is  ow,  I  have  no  doubt  that  this  might  be  tried 
with  good  effect  to  the  working-men,  and  not  only 
with  no  risk,  but  with  much  benefit,  to  the  employ¬ 
ing  capitalists.  I  have  no  doubt  that  those  who 
adopted  it  would  find  themselves  placed  at  an  ad¬ 
vantage  in  competition  with  those  who  did  not. 
They  would  win  to  themselves  the  best  workmen  ; 
their  business  would  be  more  easily  conducted  and 
extended,  and  its  management  would  impose  upon 
them  less  care  and  less  exertion.  Nor  have  I  any 
doubt  that  the  beginning  of  such  a  movement  on 
the  side  of  the  employers  would  be  responded  to 
very  quickly  on  the  side  of  the  better  and  more 
ambitious  working-men,  by  a  movement  toward 
raising  the  standard  of  character  and  workman¬ 
ship  in  their  several  trades,  and  toward  combining 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


145 


individualism  with  cooperation.  They  would  b6 
prompted  to  throw  their  influence  against  that 
fatal  policy  in  the  trades-unions  which  establishes 
a  mean  level  of  mediocrity  and  shiftlessness,  which 
represses  ambition,  crushes  personal  freedom,  and 
wears  out  all  the  energies  there  are  in  the  struggle 
that  labor  makes  for  better  conditions,  by  harness¬ 
ing  them  to  dead  loads  of  incapability  and  laziness.  . 
They  would  exert  themselves  to  make  the  trade- 
union  what  it  might  be — the  organized  govern¬ 
ment  of  a  craft ;  powerful  to  maintain  justice  and 
liberty  among  its  members ;  to  secure  for  each  the 
largest  exercise  of  his  capabilities ;  to  stimulate  in 
each  the  highest  ambition ;  to  dignify  to  every  one 
the  estimate  of  his  avocation;  to  fix  just  stand¬ 
ards  of  qualification  and  obligation,  and  to  enforce 
just  rules  of  apprenticeship,  despising  every  other 
attempt  than  that  to  narrow  the  doors  of  admission 
to  any  trade.  I  believe,  as  I  live,  that  such  results 
as  these  would  follow,  and  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  blind  mischief  which  the  labor-unions  of  the 
present  time  are  doing,  both  to  labor  and  capital, 
can  be  arrested  in  any  other  way  than  by  the  invi¬ 
tation  and  encouragement  of  something  different 
from  an  unmixed  wages  system.  What  do  you 
think  ?  ” 

“  It  looks  reasonable,”  said  I.  “  It  is  reason¬ 
able.  I  cannot  see  the  least  room  for  doubting 
that  you  are  right.  But,  if  nothing  beyond  pres- 
7 


14G 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


ent  wages  is  to  be  distributable  among  the  labor¬ 
ers  except  just  the  increase  of  product  to  which 
their  labor  may  be  stimulated,  the  gain  to  them, 
although  considerable,  cannot  be  all  that  final 
equity,  in  your  view,  demands.  According  to 
what  you  have  said,  you  evidently  contemplate 
something  more  in  the  end.” 

“  Oh,  yes,”  was  his  reply ;  “  we  must  not  dis¬ 
guise  the  fact  that  ultimately  something  more  is 
involved,  if  we  once  introduce  the  principle  of  divi¬ 
dends  to  labor,  and  give  recognition  to  it  on  even 
the  smallest  scale.  There  is  no  question  in  my 
mind  that  it  will  finally  involve  a  considerable  re¬ 
duction  of  the  profits  of  capital.  The  pressure  of 
the  principle,  systematically  organized,  will  steadi¬ 
ly  force  them  down.  But  it  is  very  plain  to  me 
that  there  is  ample  room  for  such  a  reduction  of 
profits,  from  their  present  average  rate,  as  will  af¬ 
ford  all  the  addition  that  is  needful  and  just  to  the 
compensations  of  labor,  without  impairing  at  all 
the  strength  of  the  motives  on  which  the  accumu¬ 
lation  and  employment  of  capital  depend.  Let  us 
look  at  them : 

“  The  payment  which  the  employing  capitalist 
demands  from  the  production  to  which  his  capital 
is  applied  is  made  up  of  three  parts.  There  is — 
1.  The  payment  to  him  for  having  refrained,  dur¬ 
ing  successive  years,  from  the  entire  consumption 
of  his  acquisitions  of  wealth,  and  for  having  saved 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


147 


and  accumulated  tliem  and  employed  them  pro¬ 
ductively — which  Mr.  Senior  has  happily  called 
£tlie  remuneration  of  abstinence.’  There  is — 2. 
The  payment  to  him  for  risks  of  loss,  which  are 
taken  in  nearly  all  employments  of  capital,  owing 
to  the  casualties  and  uncertainties  of  production 
and  trade.  There  is — 3.  The  payment  to  him, 
when  he  is  the  manager  of  his  own  capital,  for  his 
personal  executive  services  in  connection  with  it. 

The  first  of  these  payments — that  for  the  re¬ 
muneration  of  abstinence — seems  to  diminish  as 
the  state  of  civilization  advances,  as  the  accumu¬ 
lation  of  capital  increases,  and  as  the  effective  de¬ 
sire  of  accumulation  is  developed.  That  it  is 
capable  of  being  reduced  very  low,  without  dis¬ 
couraging  the  abstinence  which  augments  capital, 
we  have  good  evidence  in  the  world  already.  We 
have  an  exact  measure  of  it  in  the  current  rate  of 
interest  on  money  that  is  loaned  out  upon  such 
security  that  no  risk  attends  the  loaning.  Gov¬ 
ernment  loans,  in  countries  where  a  state  of  politi¬ 
cal  stability  is  well  assured,  are  of  that  character. 
The  element  of  risk  is  so  nearly  eliminated  from 
such  investments  of  capital  that  there  is  no  need 
of  reckoning  it  at  all.  It  is  about  the  same  with 
safe  loans  on  mortgage,  and  with  some  personal 
investments,  also,  in  property  which  cannot  be  im¬ 
paired  under  any  probable  contingency.  How,  the 
rate  of  interest  on  permanent  or  prolonged  loans 


148 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


of  the  kind  described  lias  fallen  in  England  and 
Holland  to  two  and  three  per  cent.,  and  those  are 
countries  in  which  the  motives  that  produce  an 
accumulation  of  capital  seem  to  he  more  energetic 
than  in  almost  any  others.  This  low  rate  of  in¬ 
terest  represents  the  minimum  reward  which  will 
constitute,  in  those  countries,  a  sufficient  induce¬ 
ment  to  abstinence  from  the  present  consumption 
of  wealth,  and  a  sufficient  encouragement,  there¬ 
fore,  to  that  cumulative  employment  of  labor 
which  produces  capital. 

“  As  for  the  second  ground  of  payment  to  capi¬ 
tal,  which  is  for  the  risk  of  its  destruction,  when 
employed  as  in  manufactures  or  in  trade,  the  haz¬ 
ards  to  which  it  is  exposed  are  of  two  kinds.  It 
may  be  absolutely  destroyed  and  go  out  of  exist¬ 
ence,  both  as  wealth  and  capital,  by  casualties  of 
lire,  flood,  shipwreck,  etc. ;  or,  only  the  right  of 
property  which  the  investor  had  in  it  may  be  de¬ 
stroyed,  through  the  vicissitudes  of  commerce,  so 
that  it  passes  into  other  hands,  either  to  be  unpro- 
ductively  consumed  or  to  be  still  used  as  capital 
with  a  change  of  ownership  merely.  The  value  of 
the  first-named  class  of  risks  has  been  found  sus¬ 
ceptible,  for  the  most  part,  of  very  exact  calcu¬ 
lation,  under  the  averaging  law  of  chances,  and  it 
is  set  down  in  the  rates  of  insurance.  The  capi¬ 
talist  almost  always  transfers  that  class  of  risks  to 
those  who  have  made  a  special  business  of  taking 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


149 


them,  and  his  payments  for  insurance  are  charged 
into  the  expenses  of  his  own  proper  business,  so 
that  remuneration  for  these  risks  is  no  part,  gen¬ 
erally  speaking,  of  the  profit  which  he  demands  to 
compensate  him  for  his  employment  of  capital. 
The  value  of  the  risk,  moreover,  is  slight — sur¬ 
prisingly  slight,  now  that  our  underwriting  arith¬ 
metic  has  reduced  it  to  a  precise  computation. 
Of  the  second  class  of  risks,  the  greater  part  are 
incident  to  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  in¬ 
vestor  of  capital,  and  attach  so  entirely  to  himself 
that  he  has  no  fair  reason  for  making  a  charge 
against  the  community  on  account  of  them.  Not 
all  of  them,  to  be  sure,  for  there  are  elements  of 
uncertainty  in  production  and  trade  which  elude  all 
forecalculation,  and  some  liberal  allowance  is  to  be 
made  for  these ;  but  it  is  unquestionably  true  that 
the  investor  of  capital  in  productive  or  commercial 
enterprises  risks  far  more  upon  his  own  knowledge, 
his  own  judgment,  his  own  alertness  of  perception, 
his  own  economical  vigilance,  his  own  calculating 
faculties  and  his  own  prudence,  than  in  any  other 
way.  I  venture  to  say  that  seven-tenths,  at  least, 
of  all  the  losses  and  failures  that  occur  in  the  manu¬ 
facturing  and  mercantile  world  are  due  to  one  or 
the  other  of  the  following  causes,  or  to  all  of  them 
combined:  1.  The  want  of  a  sufficiently  wide 
knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  the  business  pur¬ 
sued,  or  inattention  to  the  changes  of  the  facts 


150 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


which  bear  upon  it :  2.  Miscalculation  from  the 
facts  known,  either  through  careless  or  incompe¬ 
tent  reckoning.  3.  Thriftless  and  wasteful  man¬ 
agement,  due  to  the  want  of  watchful  executive 
force.  4.  Ill-judged  confidence  in  others — extend¬ 
ing  credit  incautiously  and  unwisely.  5.  Reckless 
speculation,  or  taking  chances  of  the  market  which 
are  illegitimate,  because  outside  of  the  realm  of  ra¬ 
tional  calculation.  6.  Last  and  greatest  of  all — 
personal  extravagance,  or  personal  consumption  in 
excess  of  any  reasonable  reckoning  of  business  prof¬ 
its.  Now,  these  are  all  sources  of  risk  which  lie 
within  the  control  of  the  investor  of  capital,  and 
which  cannot  be  properly  charged  for  in  the  de¬ 
mand  for  profits  upon  capital  invested  and  man¬ 
aged  by  the  owner.  The  risks  which  lie  outside 
are  comparatively  small. 

“  Finally,  we  have  the  payment  to  be  made 
for  the  personal  executive  services  of  the  capital¬ 
ist  and  business  manager.  I  am  willing  to  put  a 
liberal  estimate  upon  these,  but  not  to  rate  them 
extravagantly  beyond  the  compensations  paid  for 
all  other  kinds  of  service.  To  the  man  of  busi¬ 
ness,  ordinarily,  his  business  is  his  pleasure,  its  oc¬ 
cupations  his  delight.  He  pursues  it,  ordinarily, 
even  after  the  merely  gainful  desires  have  ceased 
to  act  with  any  strong  stimulation  upon  him.  lie 
has  no  other  sufficient  field  of  activity  open  to 
him ;  he  has  no  other  sufficient  resources  of  en- 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


151 


joyment.  Without  the  occupations  of  his  busi¬ 
ness  he  would  be  wretched.  I  am  sure,  therefore, 

that  no  extraordinary  remuneration  is  needed  to 

«/ 

induce  men  of  business  faculties  to  employ  their 
faculties,  and  I  see  no  reason  why  their  compensa¬ 
tion  for  personal  services  should  exceed,  at  most, 
the  higher  salaries  paid  in  public  and  professional 
life. 

u  Looking,  therefore,  at  all  the  parts  of  the 
payment  made  to  the  capitalist,  in  the  form  of 
profits,  I  conclude  that  there  is  room  for  a  consid¬ 
erable  reduction  in  their  rate  without  weakening 
the  inducements  to  abstinence,  by  which  capital  is 
accumulated,  or  weakening  the  inducement  of 
risks  in  the  employment  of  capital,  or  weakening 
the  inducements  to  exertion  in  the  management 
of  capital.  If  the  general  introduction  of  a  sys¬ 
tem  of  dividends  to  labor  should  result  in  the  par¬ 
titioning  of  something  less  than  twenty  or  fifteen 
or  even  ten  per  cent,  of  the  total  product  of  labor 
to  the  business-managing  capitalist  for  his  profit, 
I  am  confident  that  the  efficiency  of  the  forces 
which  political  economy  takes  account  of  would 
not  be  at  all  impaired.  The  consequence  of  such 
a  system  would  simply  be,  that  the  minimum 
measure  of  the  inducements  under  which  capital 
can  be  accumulated  and  employed  would  be  found ; 
and  that  would  be  the  realization  of  justice  be¬ 
tween  capital  and  labor.” 


152 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


“  But,  for  the  bringing  about  of  this  state  of 
things.”  said  I,  “  you  look  to  nothing  except  the 
growths  of  public  sentiment  and  opinion  which 
you  have  alluded  to,  from  time  to  time,  in  our 
discussion  ?  ” 

“  To  nothing  else,”  he  answered,  “  except  in 
one  direction.  There  is  one  direction,  only,  in 
which  I  would  invoke  the  aid  of  legislation.  To 
that  single  end  I  would  make  the  question  a  po¬ 
litical  one,  and,  if  I  had  in  me  any  of  the  qualities 
of  an  agitator,  I  would  go  among  the  working-men 
and  set  up  in  their  midst  the  standard  of  a  new 
party,  to  be  organized  upon  that  solitary  issue,  and 
I  would  try  to  rally  them  about  it  until  they  had 
fought  the  issue  out  in  every  country  under  the 
sun.  I  would  rally  them,  if  I  could,  as  a  class,  in 
uncompromising  hostility  to  all  public  debt-mak¬ 
ing,  of  every  kind,  whether  national  or  municipal. 
I  wrould  have  them  demand,  and  combine  to  en¬ 
force  their  demand,  that  the  power  to  contract 
debt  be  absolutely  taken  away  from  every  branch 
•and  division  of  government — from  Congress  and 
Parliament  down — unless  taxation  to  pay  the  debt, 
within  three  or  five  years  at  most,  shall  precede 
or  go  with  the  debt-making  act.  To  accomplish 
that  abolition  of  debt-making  power  in  govern¬ 
ment  would  be  the  greatest  triumph  ever  won  in 
the  interest  of  labor.  I  will  tell  you  why. 

“  We  have  seen  at  what  a  multiplying  rate  pro- 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


153 


duction  lias  increased  during  the 'past  hundred 
years,  and  is  increasing.  We  have  seen,  too,  how 
easy  it  is,  under  the  present  system  of  things,  for 
enormous  accumulations  of  the  wealth  thus  in¬ 
creasingly  produced  to  be  gathered  into  individual 
hands.  Now,  an  always-growing  share  of  these 
accumulations  is  held  by  owners  who  cannot  or 
who  do  not  wish  to  employ  it  productively  them¬ 
selves,  although  they  are  eager  to  preserve  it  as  a 
profitable  fund,  unimpaired  by  their  own  consump¬ 
tion.  This  constitutes  the  loanable  capital  of  the 
world,  and  its  quantity,  as  I  have  said,  is  being  pro¬ 
digiously  augmented.  There  is  a  fast-increasing 
number  of  men  who  hold  more  wealth,  outside  of 
their  consumption,  than  they  can  possibly  use  pro¬ 
ductively  under  their  own  management ;  there  is 
another  fast-increasing  number  of  men  who  desire 
to  escape  from  the  cares,  exertions,  and  risks  of 
the  management  of  property  productively  em¬ 
ployed  ;  and,  again,  there  is  more  and  more  in¬ 
herited  wealth  existing,  in  estates,  where  it  is  so 
situated  that,  for  one  reason  or  another,  it  cannot 
be  productively  employed  by  the  owners  in  person. 
All  these  people  resort  to  the  loaning  of  their 
wealth,  at  interest,  as  the  means  of  making  it  pro¬ 
ductive  of  income  to  themselves  without  personal 
exertion,  and  of  course  they  seek,  in  doing  so,  to 
avoid  risks  and  to  get  the  utmost  security  they  can, 
either  for  the  final  replacement  to  them  of  the 


154 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


wealth  which  they  have  given  out  of  their  own 
keeping,  or  for  the  certainty  and  permanency  of 
the  interest-payments  that  are  to  be  made  to  them 
for  the  use  of  it.  There  is  no  fault  to  he  found 
with  this  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  loaning 
class,  for  it  is  natural  and  right ;  hut  it  must  not 
be  permitted  to  create  artificially,  for  it  own  satis¬ 
faction,  modes  of  investment  or  consumption  of 
wealth  which  are  opposed  to  the  interests  of  pro¬ 
ductive  labor,  and  which  lay  lasting  burdens  upon 
it.  That,  however,  is  just  the  effect  that  it  has 
been  producing  for  the  last  hundred  years  and 
more.  The  demand  for  opportunities  to  make  safe 
loans  of  unemployed  wealth,  or  of  money,  as  we 
say,  has  forced  the  fearful  growth,  in  later  times, 
of  national  and  municipal  debts.  An  incorporated 
community,  stably  organized,  is  the  most  trust¬ 
worthy  of  all  debtors.  Its  pecuniary  obligations 
are  a  joint  mortgage  upon  the  property  of  all  its 
members.  Ho  individual  borrower  can  offer  se¬ 
curities  quite  equal  to  that.  Hence  public  loans, 
in  every  country  of  a  creditable  character,  have 
been  sought  for  with  ravenous  avidity.  A  fatal 
facility  in  debt-making,  on  the  part  of  all  the  cor¬ 
porate  divisions  of  government,  from  that  of  the 
State  at  large  down  to  that  of  the  smallest  village 
community,  has  been  the  consequence,  and  the 
loaning  class  has  exerted  a  strong  pressure  of  in¬ 
visible  and  hardly  conscious  influence  in  favor  of 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


155 


the  making  of  debts.  Thus  public  debts,  both 
national  and  municipal,  have  swollen,  within  the 
last  century,  until  their  aggregate  magnitude  is 
appalling  to  the  political  economist.  They  repre¬ 
sent  not  only  an  outrageous  mortgage  upon  future 
production,  but  a  more  outrageous  waste,  in  the 
consumption  of  wealth  which  the  owners  would 
not  themselves  consume,  and  which  might  have 
been  added  to  the  productive  capital  of  the  world. 
Three-quarters,  at  least,  of  all  the  borrowed  wealth 
which  governments  have  consumed  and  which  the 
people  are  under  bonds  to  account  for,  has  simply 
undergone  destruction  in  their  hands,  by  methods 
of  sheer  wastefulness  that  are  more  wanton  than 
any  other.  It  has  been  devoured  by  armies,  or 
has  vanished  in  the  smoke  of  battle,  or  it  has  been 
squandered  by  a  thousand  modes  in  extravagant 
and  reckless  administration.  For  some  little  part 
of  the  vast  total  of  public  debt  there  are  public 
improvements  of  permanent  usefulness  to  show — 
such  as  edifices  and  roads  and  canals ;  but  I  doubt 
if  all  these  put  together  in  the  world  will  stand 
for  one-fourth  of  the  whole.  The  stupendous  re¬ 
mainder  represents,  for  the  greater  part,  a  wicked 
obliteration  of  wealth  in  one  generation  at  the  cost 
of  posterity. 

“  How,  I  do  not  maintain  that  armies  can  yet 
be  dispensed  with  altogether  in  the  world,  nor  that 
war  can  be  always  averted  ;  but  I  do  say  that  the 


156 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


fatal  facility  in  borrowing  which  governments  have 
acquired,  by  reason  of  the  productive  progress  of 
the  world,  and  through  the  fatal  habit  of  indiffer¬ 
ence  to  debt  which  is  fostered  by  the  pressure  of 
the  increasing  demand  for  public  loans  as  an  invest¬ 
ment  of  idle  wealth,  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  causes 
wrhich  produce  in  modern  times  oppressive  mili¬ 
tary  establishments  and  ambitious  wars.  At  the 
same  time,  they  are  the  underlying  causes  of  cor¬ 
ruption,  extravagance,  and  recklessness  in  public 
expenditure,  wherever  found,  in  State  or  municipal 
government.  It  is  so  easy  to  make  up  a  deficiency 
in  revenue  bv  an  issue  of  bonds,  for  which  eager 
lenders  are  always  waiting,  and  public  opinion  is 
easily  reconciled  to  small  accretions  of  a  debt 
that  has  outgrown  the  apprehension  of  its  fig¬ 
ures.  The  process  is  an  utterly  ruinous  one,  and 
it  must  be  arrested,  in  the  interest  of  labor,  from 
whose  use  all  this  wealth,  which  might  be  work¬ 
ing  capital,  is  abstracted,  on  the  one  hand,  to  be 
added,  on  the  other,  to  the  burden  of  a  lasting 
mortgage  on  the  products  of  labor.  It  must  be 
arrested,  peremptorily  and  absolutely.  The  work¬ 
ing-class  and  the  class  of  active  capitalists  must 
combine  their  strength  of  numbers,  in  political 
action,  to  put  a  stop  to  it,  by  constitutionally  de¬ 
priving  all  governments  of  the  power  to  contract 
debt,  except  in  the  temporary  way  that  I  have  in¬ 
dicated.  Some  carefully-limited  borrowing  power 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


157 


of  that  kind  is  undoubtedly  necessary,  to  provide 
for  emergencies  which  cannot  be  forecalculated, 
and  it  would  suffice  for  all  contingencies  that  are 
conceivable.  It  would  have  sufficed  amply  in  our 
own  case,  when  we  were  driven  to  war  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union— and  no  people  were 
ever  placed  in  a  situation  of  greater  stress.  It 
seemed  to  us  at  the  time  that  we  could  not  bear 
the  cost  of  so  great  a  struggle  in  immediate  taxa¬ 
tion  ;  but  we  can  easily  see  now  that  it  would  have 
been  better  for  us  if  we  had  done  so.  It  would 
have  been  better  if  we  had  been  left  with  no  other 
alternative.  The  Union  was  not  worth  saving  to 
us  if  we  could  have  shrunk  from  the  payment  of 
the  cost  then  and  there.  As  it  was,  by  borrowing, 
we  imposed  more  than  a  double  cost  upon  our¬ 
selves  and  our  children  and  our  children’s  children. 
For  every  actual  dollar’s  worth  of  wealth  and  labor 
that  we  consumed  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war, 
we  laid  a  mortgage  for  more  than  two  dollars  on 
the  future  production  of  the  country,  by  reason  of 
the  inflation  of  prices  which  resulted  from  the 
forced  loan  of  the  legal-tender  issue.” 

“  Let  me  understand,”  said  I,  “  exactly  how 
you  would  propose  to  limit  the  borrowing  power 
of  government.” 

“  I  should  not  limit  the  sum  which  a  govern¬ 
ment  may  borrow  in  situations  of  temporary  emer¬ 
gency,  or  for  extraordinary  purposes  of  importance, 


158 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


because  tliere  is  no  ground  of  calculation  to  go 
upon  in  fixing  sucli  a  limit;  but  I  should  strictly 
and  severely  narrow  down  the  conditions  under 
which  all  public  borrowing  is  to  be  done.  I  should 
make  it  a  matter  of  constitutional  law,  applying  to 
all  the  subdivisions  of  government,  that  every  act 
which  authorizes  a  loan  shall  contain  in  itself  the 
provisions  of  extra  taxation  for  paying  the  prin¬ 
cipal  of  the  loan  within  three  or  five  years  at  the 
most,  and  that  such  provisions  of  taxation  shall  be 
subject  to  no  repeal,  nor  to  any  modification  which 
impairs  the  revenue  from  them,  after  the  loan  shall 
have  been  consummated.  The  effect  would  be  to 
make  all  public  expenditure,  whether  ordinary  or 
extraordinary,  immediately  dependent  upon  the 
temper  and  disposition  of  the  tax-paying  people, 
as  it  ought  to  be.  If  the  object  of  proposed  ex¬ 
penditure  be  not  urgent  and  important  enough  to 
command  their  assent  to  •  immediate  additional 
taxes,  it  is  proper  that  such  expenditure  should  be 
barred.  Administrators  and  legislators  would  be 
exposed  to  a  more  rigorous  criticism,  and  held  to  a 
stricter  account  of  reasons  for  every  appropriation 
which  exceeds  the  ordinary  revenues  of  govern¬ 
ment.  Extravagance  would  be  checked,  and  reck¬ 
lessness  in  political  schemes  of  personal  ambition 
as  well,  while  the  needful  energies  of  government 
would  suffer  no  detriment,  I  am  sure. 

“  You  can  see  what  consequences  of  advantage 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


159 


to  labor  would  accrue.  The  loanable  wealth, 
which  now  finds  investment  in  public  loans,  to 
the  extent  of  many  thousands  of  millions  of  dol¬ 
lars,  would  be  driven  to  take  the  risks,  more  or 
less,  of  productive  employment,  and  be  added  per¬ 
force  to  the  working  capital  of  the  world.  The 
men  who  either  cannot  or  will  not  undertake  for 
themselves  the  productive  employment  of  such 
funds  as  they  desire  income  from,  would  be  im¬ 
pelled  to  trust  more  of  them  than  they  now  do  to 
the  use  and  management  of  those  who  will.  In¬ 
dustrial  enterprise  would  be  powerfully  reenforced, 
and  a  vast  improvement  made  in  the  conditions  of 
labor  at  once.” 

“  Well,  judge,”  said  I,  “  I  will  join  your  party. 
I  can  heartily  subscribe  to  the  one  resolution  of 
its  platform.  Let  us  begin  with  a  party  of  two, 
and  there  is  no  telling  what  will  come  of  it. 

a  As  for  the  rest  of  the  doctrines  you  have  ex¬ 
pounded  to  us,  they  are  like  the  seeds  of  this  apple 
that  I  have  bitten,  in  which  some  far-off  possible 
fruitage  may  be  dimly  discerned  by  those  who 
have  the  vision  of  faith  which  you  possess.  They 
are  very  grand  doctrines  of  justice ;  very  inspir¬ 
ing  doctrines  of  hopefulness;  very  noble  in  the 
conception  of  duty  between  man  and  man  which 
they  body  forth,  and  very  lofty  in  the  ideal  of  hu¬ 
man  society  which  they  set  up.  But  there  is  only 
the  potential  seed  of  truth  in  them,  as  you  admit 


160 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


yourself.  Like  tlie  seed  of  this  apple,  they  must 
be  planted,  and  must  wait  in  obscure  darkness  for 
the  dull  earth  to  feel  them  and  to  be  felt  by  them  ; 
and  they  must  be  dissolved  by  its  storms  and 
heated  by  its  fermentations,  before  any  germ  of 
vital  force  can  make  its  appearance  in  them. 
A\rill  you  plant  them?  AV ill  you  put  what  you 
have  said  here  into  written  words,  which  may  be 
dropped  along  the  highways  and  get  their  chance, 
at  least,  of  germination  in  the  thoughts  and  acts 
of  other  men  ?  ” 

lie  shook  his  head.  “  I  cannot,”  he  said.  “  I 
found  long  ago  that  writing  is  not  my  province  of 
work  in  the  world.  I  have  not  the  courage  nor 
the  ambition  for  such  a  task.” 

“  Then  I  shall  take  the  duty  upon  myself.  I 
have  been  keeping  a  record  of  our  talks,  which  is 
not  very  far  from  exact.  If  you  do  not  prohibit 
me,  I  shall  give  it  to  print,  because  I  think  there 
are  hints  of  teaching  in  it  which  ought  to  have 
some  wider  audience  than  this.” 

He  only  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  smiled,  as 
he  rose  to  depart,  and  the  smile,  which  had  no  pro¬ 
test  in  it,  is  my  warrant  for  the  publication  of  our 
talks. 

“  Just  one  last  question,”  I  added,  as  he  stood 
at  the  door. 

“  If  there  be  a  possible  state  of  easy  conditions 
in  life  for  all  working-men  and  working-women, 


FIFTH  EVENING. 


161 


how  long  can  it  last  before  the  world  becomes  pop¬ 
ulated  in  excess  of  the  sustaining  capabilities  of 
its  soil  ?  ” 

“  Ah  !  that,”  said  the  judge,  “  is  a  question  that 
we  must  leave  with  God.  Malthus  has  not  troubled 
me  at  all,  although  I  do  not  forget  him.  The 
laws  of  increase  in  population  which  he  deduced 
are  bevond  dispute,  but  it  is  horrible  to  construe 
them  as  oracles  of  doom  against  any  wretched  class 
of  human  creatures.  I  find,  for  my  own  part,  no 
argument  of  hopelessness  in  them.  It  is  certain 
that  the  checks  upon  population  which  are  found 
in  prudent  restraints  of  marriage,  act,  in  the  sev¬ 
eral  classes  of  society,  with  a  strength  somewhat 
proportioned  to  the  culture  and  experience  of  the 
class.  It  is  in  the  state  of  poverty,  not  of  wealth, 
that  the  fecundity  of  the  race  increases.  It  is 
among  the  poor  that  marriage  is  earliest  and  most 
improvident ;  it  is  among  the  poor  that  marriage 
is  the  most  fruitful.  On  the  other  hand,  perhaps, 
it  is  in  the  ranks  of  the  pinched  and  degraded  poor 
that  death  works  busiest  to  cut  the  increase  down  ; 
but  shall  we  dare  to  found  cold  calculations  on  that  ? 
I  dare  not,  for  one. 

“  As  for  the  final  end  to  which  your  question 
looks — it  is  beyond  our  ken.  We  must  trust  it 
where  we  trust  all  that  belongs  to  the  final  destiny 
of  the  human  race.  It  lies  far  ofi  as  yet — much 
farther  than  it  seemed  to  do  when  Malthus  wrote. 


102 


TALKS  ABOUT  LABOR. 


We  are  finding  out  ways  to  produce  more  and 
more.  We  are  producing  with  less  dependence  on 
the  brutes  which  compete  with  man  for  subsist¬ 
ence  from  the  earth.  We  may  learn  by  and  by 
to  consume  with  less  waste.  The  old  local  bounda¬ 
ries  of  subsistence  are  fast  breaking  down.  Men 
are  held  no  longer,  as  they  were,  to  the  spot  of 
earth  on  which  they  were  born.  America  has 
been  opened  for  the  discharge  of  population  from 
Europe,  and  Africa  will,  open  wide  doors  in  the 
near  future.  It  will  be  long  before  the  world  is 
full  of  people  and  its  soil  can  feed  no  more.  Ere 
that  time  conies,  man  may  possibly  have  learned 
to  make  food  from  the  inorganic  elements  for  him¬ 
self.  Who  knows  \  It  will  be  as  God  has  willed. 
Let  us  leave  the  matter  with  him.” 


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Weights ,  Measures ,  and  Money ,  of  all  Nations . 

Compiled  by  F.  W.  Clarke,  S.  B.,  Professor  of  Physics  and  Chemistry  in  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Cincinnati.  Price,  $1.50. 

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metres.  III.  Land-Measures.  IV.  Cubic  Measures.  V.  Liquid  Measures.  VI. 
Dry  Measures.  VII.  Weights,  and  finally  Money.  This  latter  table  is  one  of  the  most 
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THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

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E_  IL_  YOUM  AWS. 


This  periodical  teas  started  (in  1S72)  to  promote  the  diffusion  of  valuable  sci¬ 
entific  knowledge ,  in  a  readable  and  attractive  form ,  among  all  classes 
of  the  community ,  and  has  thus  far  met  a  want  supplied  by 
no  other  magazine  in  the  United  States. 


Eight  volumes  have  now  appeared,  which  are  filled  with  instructive  and  interesting 
articles  and  abstracts  of  articles,  original,  selected,  translated,  and  illustrated,  from  the 
pens  of  the  leading  scientific  men  of  different  countries.  Accounts  of  important  scien¬ 
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forth  concerning  natural  phenomena,  have  been  given  by  savants  of  the  highest  au¬ 
thority.  Prominent  attention  has  been  also  devoted  to  those  various  sciences  which 
help  to  a  better  understanding  of  the  nature  of  man,  to  the  bearings  of  science  upon 
the  questions  of  society  and  government,  to  scientific  education,  and  to  the  conflicts 
which  spring  from  the  progressive  nature  of  scientific  knowledge. 

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